Bird flu was confirmed in a dead duck in France this afternoon - the seventh European Union country to be hit by the disease.
The European Commission said it had now been notified by the French authorities of a confirmed case of the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5 in a wild duck tested in Ain, near Lyon.
A sample from the duck was being sent to the EU's laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey, to check whether the outbreak is, as expected, a case of the more deadly H5NI virus.
The French authorities have already applied emergency containment measures set out at EU level as an obligation on all countries hit by bird flu outbreaks. These involve establishing a three-kilometre protection zone around the outbreak and a surrounding "surveillance zone" an extra seven kilometres deep.
"In the protection zone, poultry must be kept indoors, movement of poultry is banned except directly to the slaughterhouse and the dispatch of meat outside the zone is forbidden except where products have undergone controls provided for in EU food controls legislation" said a Commission statement this afternoon.
Earlier a dead swan found in France today tested negative for the disease.
Germany, Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Hungary and Austria have all reported cases of the deadly H5N1 strain of influenza in dead wild birds.
Tonight German tests confirmed that 10 more wild birds found dead on a northern island had the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain, the federal animal health institute said. They followed three previously confirmed cases.
Hungary was awaiting results from a laboratory in Britain to determine whether the H5 virus detected in three dead wild swans on Wednesday was the H5N1 strain.
"Of course we are worried and we have to get used to the fact that avian flu is now spreading within the European Union," Zsuzsanna Jakab, head of the EU's Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said.
A director with the Health Service Executive told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children yesterday that another flu pandemic was inevitable and admitted the Irish health service will "probably" not be able to cope in the event of a flu pandemic.
Dr Kevin Kelleher, director of population health, said yesterday if a pandemic of the scale of the one in 1918 was to happen again it "would overwhelm us".
Iraq declared a bird flu alert in a province south of the capital Baghdad to prevent people from transporting birds in and out of the area, Al Arabiya television reported .
The virus killed an Iraqi teenage girl in January.
H5N1 influenza remains mainly a disease of poultry, and has killed or forced the culling of more than 200 million birds across Asia, parts of the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
But it has also infected 169 people, killing 91, and is steadily mutating. If it acquires the ability to easily pass from person to person, it could cause a pandemic that would kill millions.
Evidence suggests it is carried both by wild birds and in the poultry trade and experts say quick culling is the best way to control an outbreak in birds.
"Even with the most rigorous action we cannot assume that we will overcome this matter in a few weeks," German Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer said.
Dr. Albert Osterhaus, a virologist in The Netherlands, said although swans were the most obvious victims in Europe, they were not the likely source of the spread.
"Swans fly not more than 50 km (30 miles) a day. But looking at the way the disease has spread - one day it's in Italy, a day later it's in the north of Germany - that makes us believe that there are other bird species spreading the disease," he said.