KUALA LUMPUR, January 26 (IslamOnline.net) - Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, admitted that millions of birds died of the deadly avian influenza for the last five months, but insisted that no human cases of bird flu had been reported, IslamOnline.net learnt Monday, January 26.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Monday said a strain of bird flu was behind the deaths of thousands of chickens in the south of the country, marking South Asia's first detection of the illness.

After months of cover-up, Indonesia's Agriculture Minister Sofian Sudardjat admitted that the disease was first spotted on August 29 in Pekalongan, Central Java, before spreading to other areas.

"Between September and November, the outbreak was already widespread ... but there is no evidence so far that the disease has spread to humans," said Sudardjat at a press conference carried by the state Antara news agency.

The Indonesian government was accused of covering up the outbreak due to pressure from businessmen.

"Government confirms bird flu after long cover-up," read the front-page headline of the Jakarta Post.

The government previously insisted that the country was free of the disease, and blamed the deaths of thousands of chickens across East Java and Bali in the past three months on Newcastle disease, a virus that cannot be passed to humans.

Sudardjat, however, said the country will not imitate neighboring countries who are conducting killing of fowls.

He argued that a mass cull would be "ineffective because the infection was so widespread and because this would drastically reduce the supply of birds".

Several independent and government researchers had confirmed the existence of avian influenza type H5N1 in November 2003, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The disease has spread widely throughout Java and Bali and has also been reported at Lampung in Sumatra and in Kalimantan on Borneo island.

Outbreaks of bird flu have also been reported in Cambodia, Japan, Laos, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and now Pakistan. The disease has so far killed six people in Vietnam and one in Thailand

By Sunday, January 25, up to 10.7 million chickens are reported to have been exterminated or killed by the epidemic in Thailand, 4.7 million in Indonesia, 2.9 million in Vietnam, nearly two million in South Korea, 55,000 in Taiwan and 35,000 in Japan, according to AFP.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged the virus-stricken countries to prevent the virus taking a deadlier hold on humans by quickly slaughtering chickens affected by the disease.

While WHO has no evidence of human-to-human transmission, it has warned that the bird flu virus has the potential to be more serious than Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus, if it mutates into a form that can pass from person to person.