01.dec.06
Agence France Presse
SEOUL - South Korean soldiers on Friday, according to this story, guarded quarantine zones around two poultry farms hit by bird flu, as officials started slaughtering hundreds of thousands of birds in an expanded cull.
A total of 236 soldiers wearing protective suits and goggles were deployed at 17 checkpoints near the farms on the outskirts of the southern city of Iksan, the first time the military has been called in to help in the crisis.
Some 155,000 birds, mostly chickens, have already been culled and buried. On Friday, about 180 government workers started killing 600,000 more on 35 farms within a three-kilometer (two-mile) radius of the outbreaks.