ANKARA, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Turkey's agriculture ministry has confirmed it was bird flu that killed chickens in northwest Turkey, where three villages have been quarantined, the ministry said late on Tuesday.

Turkey culled 1,783 birds in the villages in Sakarya province, 125 kilometres (78 miles) east of Turkey's biggest city Istanbul.

"Three samples taken from a citizen's chickens were sent to Istanbul and it was detected that the bird flu virus is the cause of their death," the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry did not specify the strain of virus. It said the area was being disinfected and all measures were being taken by the authorities.

The chickens' deaths were first reported on Feb. 1.

Turkey also detected bird flu virus in dead chickens in Samsun province, in the north of the country, on Sunday.

Last month, Turkey culled nearly 600 poultry in villages in Zonguldak, another province on the Black Sea coast, after an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was identified.

Turkey lies on the migratory route for wild birds flying south from Scandinavia and Siberia to north Africa for winter.

Four people died from bird flu in eastern Turkey in 2006 after they came into contact with sick birds. Although bird flu remains an animal disease, experts fear the virus could mutate into a form easily passed from human to human and kill millions.

An outbreak of bird flu in the winter of 2006 hit Turkey's tourism industry and seriously damaged the poultry sector. (Reporting by Selcuk Gokoluk, Editing by Tomasz Janowski)

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