Bangkok - Land-locked Laos has reported its first two cases of H1N1, two members of the national football team recently returned from the Philippines, Radio Laos said Monday.

All 11 members of the team, plus one coach, have been hospitalized and are under observation, after two of the players tested positive for H1N1, the state-run radio said in a broadcast monitored in Bangkok.

The team had recently returned from the Philippines, the radio said.

It was the land-locked communist country's first report of local cases of the virus, also called swine flu.

Laos, ranked as one of the world's poorest nations, has a population of less than 6 million in a country half the size of France. It has been under communist rule since December, 1975.