The bird flu virus has killed thousands of quail on Indonesia’s main island of Java since February, the Agriculture Ministry said on Monday. H.R. Wasito, director-general of animal husbandry at the ministry, said some 60,000 quail had either died from the disease or been culled at farms in Central Java province. The province’s farmed quail population was around 130,000.

New cases of the H5N1 virus on a small scale have re-emerged in some parts of Indonesia since it was first found in late 2003. The authorities have insisted that overall the deadly disease is under control.

Wasito said that in the January-March period, bird flu had killed a total of 281,730 fowl in three provinces of South Sulawesi, West Java and Central Java.

The Indonesian government has said bird flu is endemic and that it would take years to fully stamp out the disease that has swept large parts of Asia since late 2003.

So far there have been no reports of the deadly H5N1 strain, which has killed 49 people in Asia, infecting people in Indonesia.