Health officials in India have confirmed an outbreak of bird flu in the eastern state of West Bengal.
Nearly 10,000 chickens have been found dead in the area in the past week and a mass cull of poultry is under way.
Tests show the birds are carrying the deadly H5N1 virus which can cause avian influenza in humans, officials say.
India's huge poultry industry is worth billions of dollars. Several outbreaks of bird flu in India in recent years have all been brought under control.
Fears for humans
Tests carried out at a federal laboratory on samples of dead birds from two districts of West Bengal confirmed that they were carrying the deadly H5N1 virus, officials said.
"We can now say there's an outbreak of bird flu in certain parts of West Bengal - in the districts of Birbhum and South Dinajpur to be specific," India's federal health secretary Naresh Dayal said.
"Out of ignorance, we had a lot of chicken curry but now we are scared"
"This has to be combated on a war footing."
Health officials have already descended on the affected area and have begun culling thousands of chickens in the districts bordering Bangladesh.
The state government has banned the import of poultry from Bangladesh which reported bird flu outbreaks last year.
Officials say they are particularly concerned after reports that villagers in West Bengal had been cooking the dead birds and eating them.
They say they will begin monitoring people for flu-like symptoms now that the virus has been confirmed.
Large quantities of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu have also been despatched to the area.
"Because a lot of villagers cooked the dead birds in the last week, we are apprehensive," Birbhum district's chief medical officer, Sunil Kumar Bhowmick, said.
"It did not appear to us that this could be bird flu," Sheikh Qasim, a small poultry farmer in the Margram area of Birbhum district, told the BBC.
"Out of ignorance, we had a lot of chicken curry but now we are scared to the bone."
India faced a major outbreak of bird flu in the north-eastern state of Manipur last year. Previous outbreaks were in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.
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