A cross sectional observational study was conducted from September, 2017 to March,rn2018 to outbreak investigation, isolation and molecular characterization of sheep andrngoat pox virus in different districts of central Ethiopia. Study was engaged differentrnapproaches especially questionnaire survey, virus isolation using vero cell line, classicalrnPCR for amplification of the DNA, gel-electrophoresis for identification of the specificrnband, real time PCR for further genotyping, sequencing the RP030 gene for identificationrnof genetic relationship of sheep and goat pox virus isolate from field with other Caprirnpox virus (CaPV).The questionnaire survey results indicated that sheep and goat pox wasrnthe most common disease in all the study areas and the disease was frequently seen. Therndisease outbreak more (52.94%) observed in rainy season. Additionally, non vaccinatedrnanimals, female and young age shoats were more affected (P< 0.05) by pox virus. A totalrnof 712 sheep and goats (603 sheep and 109 goats) were clinically examined for thernpresence of pox lesions on their skin and 35.82% sheep and 28.44% goats had poxrnlesions. Generally, high mortality (9.95%) rate was observed in sheep than goatsrnrespectively. The virus was isolated from 16 skin samples (13 sheep and 3 goats) and therncell culture showed a typical characteristic of pox virus induced-cytopathic effect withrndestruction of monolayer and rounding of the cell. Similarly, the conventional PCRrnrevealed that 16 out of 16 tested samples were positive by developing band size of 172bprn(Goat pox virus). Further more real time PCR 16 tested samples were positive for goatrnpox virus with the melting temperature of (560C/72.50C). Phylogenetic tree analysisrnrevealed that the RP030 gene (606 nucleotides) sequences of the present isolatesrnoriginated from both sheep and goats were clustered with the goat pox virus group. Evenrnthough the existing information suggested that capri pox virus is strictly host specific, butrnin the current study the PCR and RP030 gene sequencing result confirmed that sheeprnwere infected by goat pox virus similarly to goat pox virus and hence classification ofrnpox virus based on infected host in small ruminant has been found to be inconclusive.