ANKARA (AFP) - Turkish authorities said Tuesday that bird flu has been detected in poultry in a village in the northwest of the country, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The outbreak was discovered in the village of Yenicam, Sakarya province, where dozens of chicken died recently, the governor's office said in a statement carried by the agency.

"The test results have come back positive," it said, adding that further tests were under way to determine whether the virus was the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain.

A 10-kilometre (six-mile) surveillance zone has been set up around the village, inside which vets have culled nearly 700 animals and carried out health checks on residents, the statement said.

Health director Hasan Bektas told Anatolia there were so far no symptoms of the disease among the local population.

"All necessary measures have been taken and there is no reason to worry," the statement from the governor's office said.

At the weekend, the Turkish agriculture ministry said it had detected a bird flu outbreak in the city of Samsun on the Black Sea Coast, nearly 600 kilometres (370 miles) east of Sakarya.

In January 2006, four teenagers were killed in a remote Turkish town near the border with Iran in a major outbreak of the H5N1 virus which then quickly spread to more than a half of the country's 81 provinces.

They were the first human casualties of the H5N1 strain outside southeast Asia.

In April 2007, Turkey declared itself free of the virus.