Russia has banned poultry imports from Britain following an avian influenza outbreak there, the country's animal and plant health watchdog agency said on Monday, while experts confirmed cases of bird flu in southern Russia.

The ban, effective Tuesday, applies to live chickens, incubator eggs, poultry, all types of poultry products without thermal treatment, fodder and used poultry farm equipment, the Federal Veterinarian and Phytosanitary Control Service said, quoted by the Interfax news agency.

The European Commission confirmed on Saturday that the avian flu which killed 2,600 turkeys at a Suffolk farm in eastern England was the H5N1 virus.

It was the first time the deadly H5N1 strain was found on a British farm.

In Russia, the bird flu virus was confirmed in domestic birds that died last month at small farms in the Black Sea region of Krasnodar, news agencies Itar-Tass and Interfax reported.

Tissue samples "showed that the H5N1 virus killed domestic birds," Irina Voronkova, advisor to the head of the regional consumer rights protection watchdog, told Itar-Tass. No new deadly cases among birds were registered for the past week.

The cases are the first in Krasnodar this year. In 2006, more than 300,000 birds died of bird flu at one poultry farm.

Source: Xinhua