GRUDNJAK FISH POND, Croatia (Reuters) - Croatian authorities on Saturday started culling all poultry around a fish pond where the country's first bird flu case was confirmed, and police sealed off the area. 

The officials said some 10,000 birds in around 1,000 farms and rural households would be killed in the next few days. 

"The culling first takes place in the area within three kilometres from the pond. It will be done in a way that inflicts the least possible suffering on birds," Agriculture Minister Petar Cobankovic told Reuters. 

The killing of poultry will continue on Sunday in other nearby areas, and farmers will be financially compensated. 

 

On Friday, scientists detected the H5 avian flu virus in wild swans found dead at a fish pond between Orahovica and Nasice, in the east of the country, and sent samples to Britain to determine whether the virus was the lethal H5N1 strain. 

The results are expected on Monday or Tuesday. 

The Croatian Agriculture Ministry said it had banned export of poultry to EU countries. European Commission earlier said it was in preparations to enforce such a ban. Italy already banned imports of live poultry from Croatia, Romania and other Balkan countries. 

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been detected in Romania, which shares the Danube waterway with Croatia, and in Turkey. 

Police blocked all roads leading to the pond, situated in a fertile plain with wheat and cornfields. Police and veterinary experts manned checkpoints, spraying the few cars and people allowed in or out with a disinfectant. 

Residents  from  a  handful  of households inside the sealed-off 3-km (2-mile) area were not allowed to

leave before being examined by doctors. 

Reuters reporters allowed inside the area said the sprawling fish ponds looked deserted, with no birds in sight, while local farmers kept their poultry locked in coops. 

"We don't go out unless we have to," said Marica Mataja, one of the quarantined farmers, in front of her small homestead. 

Mate Brstilo, head of the national committee for bird flu prevention, told Reuters at the site that all local poultry, as well as wild fowl, would be culled. 

"It is a preventive measure for all potential transmitters of the disease," he said. 

He told farmers in the area: "Carry on with your lives, there is no panic." 

Monitoring of all birds had been stepped up in a wider 20-km area because the flock of swans was quite big and there could be more cases, he said.