Turkish authorities detected bird flu in chickens at a village in northwestern Turkey and began culling poultry, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported on Saturday.

Some 1,000 chickens had been culled at the village of Esetce in Edirne province which was close to Turkey's border with Greece, said the report, adding that the area was under quarantine for the time being.

The report did not specify the strain of the bird flu virus, so it was not clear whether the virus found at Esetce was the deadly H5N1 strain.

Three villages were quarantined and nearly 2,000 birds culled last month after tests proved the presence of bird flu in another province in northwestern Turkey.

In January, authorities confirmed an H5N1 outbreak in a village near the Black Sea coastal city of Zonguldak. During the outbreak, 12 people were infected and four of them died.

Turkey lies on the migratory route for wild birds flying south from Scandinavia and Siberia to north Africa for winter.

(Xinhua News Agency, March 23, 2008)