Some 24,000 hens have been killed in a fire on an intensive poultry farm in the west of Brabant.

The blaze also released a quantity of asbestos and people living nearby the farm were told to keep their windows and doors closed, news agency ANP said.
Fires in battery hen farms are not uncommon. In July, 170,000 hens were killed in a similar fire at a factory farm in Drenthe. In May, 20,000 birds perished in a fire near Utrecht while some 45,000 died in a fire last October.