BANGKOK, July 8 (Xinhuanet) -- Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra ordered an investigation into the country's new outbreak of bird flu, suspecting some corrupt officials covered upthe problem, the official Thai News Agency reported here Thursday.

    Thaksin told reporters on Thursday that he would severely punish the officials who were found taking money from chicken farmowners to avoid destroying their infected chickens during new outbreak of the bird flu disease.

    Most poultry farms in Thailand were heavily hit by the bird flucrisis breaking out at the beginning of this year.

    An estimated total of some 50-60 million birds were culled during the outbreak of the epidemic, which caused up to 880 million US dollars loss to the kingdom's poultry industry.

    Thailand confirmed the re-emergence of the disease early this week in the central Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani provinces.

    "We have prevented the bird flu virus from spreading by killingsome 8,000 chickens in the farms and there has been no sign showing that the virus has spread to other animals," said the prime minister.

    A quarantine over the infected farms have been imposed to avoidspread of the virus, said Deputy Prime Minister Chaturon Chaisang,who led a special working committee on curbing spread of the disease. Enditem