South Korea confirms new bird flu outbreak

SEOUL, April 7 (Reuters) - South Korea on Monday confirmed a new outbreak of bird flu at a duck farm in the southwest and said it was investigating two other possible cases days after reporting an outbreak at a nearby chicken farm.

Quarantine workers had started culling 6,500 ducks at the Jeongeup farm, where 6,000 poultry have died since last week, and had destroyed thousands of birds which had already been sent elsewhere, the Farm Ministry said.

They were also investigating two nearby duck farms where hundreds of birds had died over the weekend.

The area is only 27 km (17 miles) from the chicken farm in Gimje, about 215 km south of Seoul, which reported the country's first outbreak of H5N1 in 13 months.

The farm ministry banned distribution of 3.6 million birds within a 10 km radius of the Gimje site and the destruction of eggs distributed from the area.

South Korea had seven outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu between November 2006 and March 2007 and has spent 58 billion won ($59 million) on quarantine measures.

Bird flu has killed 238 people globally since 2003, according to the World Health Organisation. The big concern is that it could mutate into a disease that easily passes from one person to another, triggering a deadly global pandemic. (Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Nick Macfie)