Russian vets have found bird flu in a village in the southern Urals and suspected an outbreak of the disease in an neighbouring region, the emergency ministry said on Saturday.

In the village of Sunaly in the Chelyabinsk region in southern Urals, 31 chicken died and local authorities found bird flu in six samples out of 12, an emergency ministry official in Moscow told Reuters.

A Chelyabinsk emergency ministry official said vets had found the H5N1 strain and suspected that the infection came with migrating birds.

"There are 1,060 birds in the village," the official said. "They will all be killed. A quarantine was imposed from today. Vaccination of all 89 people in the village will start on Monday."

Authorities are also investigating another suspected outbreak in Russia´s Altai region.

The Moscow emergency ministry official said bird flu was suspected in a village in the Altai region, close to the Kazakh border, where 59 birds died in the village of Pokrovka on Friday.

"A quarantine zone has been imposed, although we have only found anti bodies for bird flu in the preliminary tests. The final decision on whether it is bird flu and what will be done will only be taken on Monday," the official said.

Since breaking out in late 2003 in South Korea, H5N1 has killed more than 60 people in four Asian countries and reached as far west as European Russia, Turkey and Romania, tracking the paths of migratory birds.

Moscow confirmed on Wednesday an outbreak of H5N1 in the Tula region, some 200 km (125 miles) south of the Russian capital.

Russia has been fighting bird flu since mid-July and has killed more than 600,000 domestic fowl.