Turkey culls 764,000 fowl in fight against bird flu

Turkey has slaughtered 764,000 fowl nationwide in its fight to contain the bird flu outbreak, the government’s bird flu crisis centre said today.

Nineteen people have tested positive in preliminary Turkish screenings for the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, and three of them have died. Authorities were trying to determine whether a 12-year-old girl who died yesterday was the outbreak’s latest victim.