Siberia outbreak threatens south, Mediterranean.
Russia cordoned off roads and slaughtered hundreds of birds on Monday to contain the advance of a bird flu epidemic toward Western Europe.
The country's top state epidemiologist warned that the bird flu outbreak in Siberia also could spread through Russia's key agricultural areas in the south and then on to the Middle East and Mediterranean countries.
"An analysis of bird migration routes has shown that in autumn 2005...the H5N1 virus may be spread from Western Siberia to the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea," Gennady Onishchenko said in a letter to Russian regional health officials.
The letter was posted on the Web site of the state's consumer rights watchdog.
"Apart from Russia's south, migrating birds may spread the virus to nearby countries (Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Mediterranean countries) because bird migration routes from Siberia also go through those regions in autumn," he said in the letter.
The outbreak, previously confined to five remote areas of Siberia, has now struck a major industrial region -- Chelyabinsk in the Ural mountains, which separate Asia from Europe.
"All ill and infected birds are being slaughtered there," the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.
It was unclear whether the virus found in Chelyabinsk was the deadly H5N1 strain that has killed more than 50 people in Asia since 2003 and has hit Russia's Siberia as well as neighboring Kazakhstan and Mongolia since mid-July.
Carried by flocks of wild birds migrating from Siberia to warmer regions, the virus has been steadily moving westward through the regions of Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Omsk, Kurgan and Altai.
Chelyabinsk, separated from European Russia by the Ural mountains and technically still in Siberia, is the westernmost region to have been struck so far.
It lies about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from the region where the first flu outbreak was reported.
Although no humans have yet been affected, there are fears the disease could spread to humans on the Eurasian landmass, possibly unleashing a global influenza pandemic.
Media reported that roads leading to the infected village of Oktyabrskoye in Chelyabinsk had been cordoned off to prevent the virus from spreading further.
In other affected regions, police boosted road checks, and 400 domestic birds were culled in Chelyabinsk alone to block the virus that has killed more than 10,000 birds countrywide.
Officials said wild birds, increasingly active in August as they prepare to migrate ahead of winter, were to blame.
"Results of epizootic checks have shown that they (migrant birds) are the main source of infection," Ria-Novosti news agency quoted an official with the Novosibirsk state consumer rights watchdog as saying.
There was no word on Monday on the situation in Kazakhstan and Mongolia where bird flu has also been registered along their sprawling borders with Russian Siberia.
