PARIS - Gabon has reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, for the first time since 2022 at a poultry market in the capital Libreville, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) said on Friday.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed or caused the culling of hundreds of millions of poultry globally in recent years and has increasingly been spreading to mammals, including cows in the United States.

The virus was detected in samples taken at the Mont Bouet poultry market in Libreville as part of epidemiological surveillance for avian influenza, the report submitted by Gabonese authorities to the Paris-based WOAH said.

It noted that the samples identified as positive had been taken on birds from untraced farms, making traceback to the virus source impossible.

(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide, editing by Gus Trompiz)