17 RUSSIAN VILLAGES UNDER LOCK DOWN QUARANTINE

After outbreaks of bird flu on three poultry farms in the Dagestan province, some 17 villages have been quarantined from the outside world.

EU ROLLS OUT MILITARY TO HELP CONTAIN VIRUS OUTBREAK

The EU is using the military to shut down poultry farms and chicken coops and to enforce quarantine zones around outbreak hotspots, in further desperate attempts to save the EU poultry business worth an estimated $US30 billion a year. The EU countries hold poultry stocks of more than one billion birds.

Quarantine zones have proven to extremely effective in halting the spread of the virus, with Vietnam being a prime example. Vietnam has suffered no new outbreaks of bird flu amongst its vast poultry businesses in almost five months.

A three kilomtre exclusion zone has been erected around the location in Lyon, France, where one dead duck infected wiht the virus was found last week. It was the first and only case of bird flu in France thus far.

GERMANY DEPLOYS RECON JETS AND SOLDIERS IN BIOHAZARD SUITS

Reconnaisance jets and biohazard-suited up soldiers have been deployed in Germany to search for infected birds and humans showing signs of the virus. India has been conducting house to house searches for four days in an operation locals have likened to "a war zone".

The virus has now been confirmed as having reached the German mainland, after first appearing on the Baltic island of Ruegen, where it killed a number of swans.