Nikolai Vlasov of the Agriculture Ministry told AFP that laboratory tests have confirmed the H5N1 strain in a village in Chelyabinsk Oblast.
He said laboratory results are being awaited from two other bird flu outbreaks in the Altai territory in Siberia.
Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency reported today that some 5,000 poultry had been killed over a bird-flu outbreak in an Altai village, where some 58 domestic birds died of suspected bird flu at 10 farms yesterday.
Cases of bird flu have so far been confirmed in eight Russian regions, and hundreds of thousands of birds have been killed.
The H5N1 strain has killed at least 60 people in Asia since 2003. That strain has also been found in birds in Croatia, Romania, Turkey, and in a South American parrot held in quarantine in Great Britain.
(AFP/ITAR-TASS)
