Responding to fears of a second avian influenza outbreak this year, Iraqi health officials in the southern ancient city of Amara said Thursday that they had ordered hundreds of chickens to be slaughtered, cordoned off the city and begun disinfecting cars leaving the area.

A hospital official in Amara said although no human cases of the virus had been discovered, at least two chickens tested positive. Samples from the birds were sent this week to Cairo, Egypt, for confirmation.

Migratory waterfowl are the most common carriers of avian flu. Amara is near Iraq’s largest swamp and is known for being a haven for birds.

The latest scare comes less than a month after World Health Organization confirmed that the H5N1 strain of the virus was the cause of death for a 15-year-old girl in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.