More wild birds threatened with slaughter as bird flu spreads across Europe

German officials have confirmed that two swans found on a beach on the Baltic island of Rugen have tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus.

A third case is suspected in a hawk, and Horst Seehofer, the German agriculture minister, has ordered all farmed birds to be brought indoors.

The outbreak has prompted other European countries to tighten efforts to prevent the virus infecting domestic livestock by also ordering all poultry flocks to be kept inside.

Germany and Austria have become the latest EU states to confirm bird flu outbreaks and follow Bulgaria where H5N1 has been found in a wild swan in a wetland region near Romania and Italy, where a total of eight dead wild swans found in Sicily and on the southern mainland have tested positive for H5N1.

Police there have impounded more than 80,000 chickens and 7,000 eggs from farms in the south while Italian poultry sales have plunged 50 percent.

The European commission has approved Euro 1.9m in additional funding for national surveillance programmes and extra testing facilities to ensure early detection of bird flu outbreaks.

Veterinary experts meeting in Brussels have given their support for increased surveillance of wild birds and stricter bans on imports into the EU, such as suspending the import of untreated feathers from all non-EU countries.

The measures come as the virulent disease spreads across Europe and confirmation that the strain has been found in wild birds in Greece, Italy and is suspected in Slovenia and Austria.

In Austria two dead swans were found to have been infected with H5N1 virus and farmers have confined their poultry to barns around the area where the swans were found.

Austria has created a restricted zone within a 3-km radius in the Styria region on the borders of Slovenia.

Poultry markets and shows, and hunting for wild fowl, have all been banned.

In Denmark, officials are still checking nine dead swans for signs of the disease, and are urging farmers to keep their poultry indoors; a formal outdoor ban is imminent and both Sweden and Switzerland are following suit.

French president, Jacques Chirac, has ordered measures to be strengthened in order to protect France's poultry population, and food safety agencies are recommending all poultry be brought inside.

Officials in the in the U.K say currently there are no plans to change the risk assessment and order poultry indoors.

Experts are apparently also considering measures, such as increasing checks at farms and wetlands.

EU spokesman Philip Tod says the national surveillance programmes will carry on until the end of the year, and 60,000 wild birds and 300,000 domestic birds would be tested for bird flu in EU countries.

The Netherlands has also extended its order to keep poultry indoors to the whole country, along with Norway, which has ordered farmers to keep chickens and turkeys indoors.

New cases of suspected bird flu in Romania have been found in birds in the Danube delta, where the disease was first detected last October.

Russian President Vladimir Putinhas also ordered measures to prevent a new outbreak; Russians have been battling with bird flu in poultry since July, and have already culled more than 600,000 domestic fowl, but to date no human infections have occurred.

Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland have also ordered the confinement of all poultry.

Turkey has already had 12 confirmed cases of human H5N1 infection, with four deaths since last October.

Officials in the Ukraine have also detected new cases of bird flu among wild birds on the Crimea peninsula where more than 200,000 birds have already been destroyed since H5N1 was discovered in villages in northeastern Crimea last year.

Iraqi officials have issued an alert in the southern province of Maysan and are calling for a ban on the transportation birds out of the region.

Authorities in Africa are concerned as dead chickens and ducks found in the border towns of Magaria and Zinder in Niger are being investigated for the deadly virus.

As a precaution health experts, vets and soldiers have been sent to help protect its 900-mile border with Nigeria.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation sent to Nigeria to assess bird flu have met resistance from local authorities and been denied access to contaminated farms.

It is rumoured that Nigerian authorities knew of the existence of a deadly bird flu strain up to 19 days before informing the public of Africa's first documented case.

Meanwhile, many experts are worried that the focus on the wild bird population as the principal means of transmission of the virus is both misguided and dangerous.

Some conservationists believe that the illegal trade in poultry is far more likely to spread bird flu than wild fowl migration.

They say their claim is backed by the fact that countries operating strict control on poultry imports from neighbouring infected countries, such as Myanmar, South Korea and Malaysia, are currently free of the disease.

Other experts disagree saying there is evidence suggesting migratory birds were spreading bird flu as genes found in infected chickens in Nigeria exactly matched those found last summer in infected birds in Turkey, a major route for a number of migratory species from Asia.

The World Health Organisation also seems unsure of the role of migratory birds in spreading the H5N1 virus.