BEIJING (Reuters) - China has reported deadly bird flu in chickens and ducks in a village in the central province of Hunan, on the heels of another outbreak in the east of the country, and declared it had been brought under control. 

China notified the United Nations of the latest outbreak in Xiangtan County -- near the provincial capital, Changsha -- on Tuesday, according to a notice on the Web site of the World Organization for Animal Health (www.oie.int). 

The World Health Organization has said the H5N1 strain of bird flu is endemic in poultry in China and across much of Asia, and it could only be a matter of time before it develops the ability to pass easily from human to human.  China has reported no human cases so far. 

An Agriculture Ministry official in Beijing confirmed the Hunan outbreak but gave no details. The notice said that 687 chickens and ducks showed signs of illness, 545 had died and a total of 2,487 birds were culled in the outbreak in Hunan county, also famous in China as Mao Zedong's birthplace. 

"The outbreak has been effectively controlled," the Agriculture Daily newspaper said, quoting the national bird flu laboratory as saying it had

identified the strain as the deadly H5N1. 

On Tuesday China reported another outbreak among farm geese in the eastern province of Anhui and said that it, too, had been brought under control with no reported human infections. 

China had also notified Hong Kong of the outbreak, the government said. The former British colony, which reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, gets much of its food from the neighboring southern Chinese province of Guangdong, which borders Hunan. 

Hong Kong does not currently buy any poultry meat or live birds from Hunan but will bar any such imports from the province as a precaution, the government added. 

"We will monitor the development of the situation in the coming weeks," the government said. 

There have been other recent outbreaks in far-western Xinjiang, Qinghai and in northern Inner Mongolia. 

China's sheer size and its attempts to conceal the emergence of the SARS virus in 2003 have prompted fears among some experts that it has had more bird flu cases than officially recorded. 

But experts and U.N. officials have said they believe China is better prepared and more open than in 2003.