Eleven Azerbaijanis were suspected to have caught deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, with three of them dead, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization confirmed here on Thursday.

All the victims, including eight from one same family, lived in a village near Baku, capital of Azerbaijan.

They showed symptoms similar to the H5N1 virus after having contact with diseased poultry in the past few weeks, but it was still unknown what virus the poultry had contracted, WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng said.

Cheng said: "It is possible that they caught H5N1 bird flu, because we have found the virus in the neighboring areas."

Blood samples from the dead and the others would be sent to a laboratory in London to determine whether they had caught the H5N1 virus, and test results would be available within two weeks or even tomorrow at the earliest, she added.

The Azerbaijani Agriculture Ministry said on March 4 that 500,000 poultry had been slaughtered in the country after cases of birds and poultry being infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu were first detected last month.

The WHO announced that up to Wednesday, the H5N1 virus has infected 175 people in seven countries and killed 96 of them since 2003.