BANGKOK, February 17, (IslamOnline.Net & News Agencies) - The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned Tuesday, February 17, that Asia's bird flu crisis was far from over as Thailand battled a major resurgence of the virus and new cases were reported in China and Japan.

"Despite massive efforts to stamp out the virulent avian influenza virus, the disease continues to spread in poultry producing areas in some Asian countries," said the U.N. body in a statement.

"We have never given any target dates, we have only said it will take some time. It is very risky to establish timelines now," FAO's regional animal health officer Hans Wagner told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Japan, which until now had only one case of bird flu, confirmed a second outbreak in the country's southwest, dashing hopes of declaring itself free of the disease later this week.

However, there have not yet been any human casualties.

China also reported two new confirmed outbreaks in central Hunan province, bringing to 43 the number of cases across more than half of the vast nation's provincial-level regions.

Widespread vaccinations and destruction of infected birds is now taking place to prevent further spread of the disease after the disease hit half of China’s 31 provinces.

The bird flu epidemic in Asia has lead to the destruction of millions of poultry (AFP)

"Yesterday's results were from only 2,000 samples and we found bird flu had re-emerged in 14 spots or the equivalent of 0.7 percent of total samples."

The World Health Organization (WHO) foreshadowed the new Thai cases last week, warning the kingdom risked triggering a second outbreak by lifting its quarantine restrictions prematurely.

Whistle-blowing Thai senator Nirun Phitakwachara, who revealed the presence of bird flu here last month despite government denials, also said Tuesday it had rushed to lift quarantine zones in an effort to stem economic damage.

"The government merely wanted to regain confidence which resulted in it urgently lifting the outbreak zones," said Nirun, adding that he believed it would another three months to eradicate the virus.

However, the deputy agriculture minister blamed the new outbreaks on breeders of fighting cocks, who he said fled infected regions with their valuable birds instead of slaughtering them, and urged them to cooperate with authorities or risk being jailed.

Despite the serious setback, and confirmation that H5N1 had also been detected in hundreds of dead storks found outside Bangkok, the official said he was confident Thailand would meet a new March deadline to wipe out bird flu.

The BBC News Online put at six the death toll in Thailand ­­and 14 in Vietnam.

It recalled that Thailand was the first country to report an outbreak of what it called "bird cholera", which was later confirmed as an outbreak of avian flu, whereupon other Asian countries followed suit.

Since the beginning of the outbreak of bird flu in Asia last summer, millions of chickens and ducks have been destroyed in farms across Asia.

The deadly strain of the virus is H5N1, which can spread from poultry to humans but health officials have not yet confirmed whether the virus can spread from one human to another.

Despite the widening outbreaks, the WHO said it was increasingly confident that bird flu would not cause major human casualties in its current form.

"I would certainly expect some more cases but not a large number. We now have nearly one month behind us of lessons where the number of cases has only increased very, very slowly," said Thailand representative Bjorn Melgaard.