Romania found a suspected case of bird flu in a house on the outskirts of Bucharest on Tuesday, as authorities struggled to contain a new wave of the deadly disease which has hit poultry across the country.

More than a hundred outbreaks have been found in the last three weeks, some in Bucharest and many around a poultry farm about 170 km (100 miles) north of the capital which had sold live chickens without health certificates.

Romania was the first country to detect the virus in birds in Europe last year but it had contained the first wave of the disease earlier this year.

"Tests which are 99 percent precise detected the bird flu virus in poultry from a household in the Bucharest´s Sector 1 and we prepare to cull the several hundreds of domestic birds from the neighborhood," said veterinary authority spokeswoman Alina Monea.

Nearly one million fowl have been culled in recent weeks, mainly in Transylvania, she said.

On Monday, the government said it would increase fines for poultry farms which do not take security measures to prevent the spread of the virus.