Thailand's caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra yesterday urged poultry farmers to report to the authorities on any mysterious death of their birds, following the death of a young man from bird flu and the hospitalization of three other persons in northern Thailand.

It appears that a new outbreak of bird flu, the fourth round of its kind, has emerged in Thailand after the cases in northern province of Phichit were reported, according to Thai public health authorities.

The government has banned the movement of poultry and will notify the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Organization for Animal Health.

Caretaker prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra asked poultry producers at all levels, whether household farmers who keep a few birds or large-scale commercial producers, to inform public officials immediately if any of their fowls died of unknown causes.

However, Thaksin said the government would not declare the entirety of Phichit Province a bird flu outbreak area, but would only declare specific locations where the disease had been detected as being at-risk areas.

Public Health Minister Pinij Jarusombat conceded on Wednesday morning that a 17-year-old boy from Tabkhlo District of Phichit who died recently had been infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus, the first victim of human bird flu in the kingdom during the past one and a half years since February 2005.

Meanwhile, a nine-year-old boy from the same area is suspected of having contracted bird flu as some 50 chickens in his neighborhood died suspiciously of the same disease. Another two suspected bird flu patients, a 56-year-old man and a 78-year-old Buddhist monk, have been admitted to hospital in the province. Their blood test results have not yet been completed.