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ANKARA - Bird flu has been detected among poultry in a village in the southeastern Turkish province of Batman, with experts still examining whether it is the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain, the agriculture ministry said Thursday.
"There has been no finding so far to suggest that humans in the region may have been infected," ministry spokesman Osman Bengi told AFP.
A nationwide action plan of measures to prevent the possible spread of the virus has been activated amid renewed warnings to people not to keep poultry outdoors, the ministry said.
A quarantine zone was imposed within a 10 kilometer (6.2 miles)-radius around the village of Bogazkoy, where 170 birds died, it said. The zone includes two other villages nearby.
The authorities were informed of chicken deaths in Bogazkoy on Monday.
"Detailed work is under way to determine the type of the disease," the ministry said.
Veterinary experts have begun slaughtering birds in the village, altogether some 900 chickens, turkeys and ducks.
The virus is believed to have been brought into the area by migratory birds.
A major bird flu outbreak claimed the lives of four Turkish children in January 2006 in a remote eastern region near the border with Iran, from where the virus quickly spread to more than one third of Turkey's 81 provinces.
The disease had been eliminated in Turkey since the last recorded case on March 31, the statement said. More than 2.5 million birds were culled across the country.
The four Turkish teenagers who died last year -- three siblings and their cousin -- became the first human casualties of the H5N1 strain outside Southeast Asia and China.
They all hailed from the town of Dogubeyazit in eastern Turkey, one of the country's poorest regions, where people are traditionally in close contact with poultry as backyard breeding is often their only source of livelihood.
Eight other people confirmed as H5N1 carriers by the World Health Organization recovered after treatment.
- AFP /ls
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