ANKARA (AFP) - Turkish authorities in the northern coastal town of Samsun have erected a quarantine zone and begun slaughtering poultry after suspected cases of bird flu, news agency Anatolia reported on Saturday.

"Samples have been taken and slaughtering has started within a given area. A 10-kilometre (six-mile) protection and observation zone has been set up, inside which health checks have begun," Anatolia cited a statement from local authorities as saying.

Disinfection sites are in operation around the Galeric area, where poultry from seven farms have been slaughtered, it said.

Last month the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was found in a village about 350 kilometres west of Samsun, which lies on Turkey's Black Sea coast.

In January 2006 bird flu killed four children in a small town in eastern Turkey after the virus spread to more than a third of Turkey's 81 provinces.

Authorities in Turkey, the first country outside east and south-east Asia where humans have contracted the virus, declared the country bird flu-free in April.

Humans typically catch bird flu by coming into direct contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the H5N1 strain may mutate into a form easily transmissible between people.

Bird flu has killed more than 200 people worldwide since 2003.