A third case of bird flu has been confirmed in a northeastern German state, bringing the number of avian flu cases in the province to 24.

A chicken at a small farm in Brandenburg region, a rural state that surrounds Berlin and is located on the border with Poland, had tested positive for the virus, a veterinarian official said Wednesday.

It was the third case in 10 days in Brandenburg and 31 birds in the village were culled.

Officials in Brandenburg sealed off a protection zone with a radius of three km and declared a 10-km zone as the surveillance zone. There are 150,000 birds in the surveillance zone.

Several cases of H5N1 have been found in birds in Germany this year and the country was the scene of a widespread bird flu epidemic in 2006. The disease spread to mammals last year, infecting three cats and a marten.

HE/RE