JERUSALEM, March 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Israeli Agriculture Ministry on Friday confirmed the first bird flu outbreak in the country, Israel Radio reported.

    Citing an official source, the radio said that the Agriculture Ministry had confirmed that the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu led to the deaths of over 10,000 turkeys on two farms in southern Israel, the first such case in the country.

    In addition, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported that three people, either living or working on one of the two farms located in the southern area of Negev, had been rushed to hospital for treatment of suspected symptoms of bird flu infection.

    The Agriculture Ministry has ordered the slaughter of thousands of birds on the two farms and a third one near Jerusalem where bird flu was suspected, the report added.

    Israel has geared up for bird flu outbreaks, ordering that all the birds in the affected farms and nearby farms be destroyed and that a quarantine be imposed with a radius of 10 kilometers around the farms if the deadly virus is detected.

    Last month, Israel's neighboring country Egypt detected its first case of H5N1 in chickens.

    The H5N1 strain of bird flu, which re-emerged in east Asia in December 2003, has killed over 90 people worldwide in the last few years and is spreading rapidly across the world. Experts fear that the disease, currently jumping from birds to humans through close contact, might mutate into a form that can easily pass among humans, leading to a global pandemic. Enditem