Inside the zone, all poultry movements would be halted, and if any poultry was found to be infected the entire flock would face slaughter.
So far across Europe, the H5N1 virus has been identified in poultry and wild birds, primarily swans, in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Ukraine and Russia.
In Egypt, the virus has been detected in domestic poultry in Cairo and in the Minya region, 250km south of the capital.
Tests were being carried out on chickens in the southern governorate of Qena, where the popular tourist areas of Luxor and Thebes are located, after the mysterious deaths of some 130 birds in a village, a government spokesman said on Friday.
H5N1 kills about half the humans it infects. Since 2003, 93 people, all of whom had come into direct contact with the carcasses of infected fowl, have died, most of them in China and Southeast Asia, but also in Iraq and eastern Turkey, according to WHO figures.
Health experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that can pass between humans, leading to a global pandemic.



