BERLIN, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Around 10,000 birds were killed overnight after bird flu was detected on an eastern German poultryfarm, officials said on Thursday.

    Deadly H5N1 virus was reported on Wednesday in dead turkeys at Wermsdorf in the state of Saxony, which previously had been unaffected by the disease.

    The remaining poultry -- about 6,000 turkeys, ducks and geese -- are due to be culled on Thursday in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus, German news agency DPA reported.

    Scientists at the Friedrich Loeffler Institute of animal healthconfirmed on Wednesday that the H5N1 strain of avian flu virus wasfound on the farm, but they were doing further tests to see if it was the highly pathogenic Asian variety, which has killed more than 20 people this year.

    An exclusion zone has been imposed over a radius of three kilometers around the site of the infection and an observation area over a 10-kilometer radius has been established.

    This was the first case of bird flu at a commercial poultry farm in Germany, where hundreds of wild birds and three domestic cats have died of the virus since it was discovered in early February.

    The virus was first detected in Germany among wild birds on theisland of Ruegen in the Baltic Sea, but it has since rapidly spread to seven states.

    The German government announced at the end of last month that it would spend 60 million euros (73 million US dollars) on bird flu research in the next four years, hoping to develop a vaccine for humans soon.

    The H5N1 strain has killed more than a hundred people globally.Enditem