Bird flu spreads suspicion, disbelief in Azerbaijan villages
16/03/2006 19:46, by Simon Ostrovsky

A waist-high pile of earth has been bulldozed to block the entrance to two villages where Azerbaijan's authorities have announced three human deaths from bird flu.

But little else sets these villages apart from others lining Azerbaijan's main throughway between Iran and Russia and locals are refusing to believe that a disease from poultry could have killed the teenagers.

"Bird flu is a big lie. They can't figure out why my children died because they're stupid, so they called it that," shouted Naile Askerova, whose 16-year-old son and 19-year-old daughter were among those named as victims by health officials on Tuesday.

Askerova and a number of relatives at a Shiite memorial service held for her children said they believed that their chickens, some of which were in the yard where the ceremony was being held, posed no danger.

Nearly every household in Sarvan and Dayikend -- some 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of the capital Baku -- continues to keep live poultry despite a health ministry notice ordering the eradication of all domestic birds within a three-kilometer radius of any outbreak of avian influenza.