InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
WARSAW - Europe shivered in some of the coldest temperatures seen in decades Wednesday as the death toll topped 80 and countries battled to clear snow from roads and railways.
At least 28 people froze to death overnight in eastern and central Europe, while countries further west and south began to feel the effects of a cold front spreading from Siberia.
Snow hit Italy, which struggled to clear motorways and railways after heavy falls, and the French Mediterranean island of Corsica.
In Ukraine, officials said 13 people had died of hypothermia over the past 24 hours, bringing the overall toll there to 43 over the past six days.
Most were homeless people who froze to death on the streets, but seven died in their homes and more than 800 sought medical help for frostbite and hypothermia as temperatures plunged to minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit) in some regions.
Poland reported five found dead overnight, bringing the overall toll to 20 since temperatures plummeted there on Friday.
The victims, most of whom had been homeless, were four men aged 29 to 61 and an 83-year-old woman, police said.
Temperatures plunged to minus 30C in some parts of the country, officials said.
Most of the victims had been homeless, or individuals who got drunk and fell asleep outdoors, they said.
In Slovakia, two people died as temperatures plunged to minus 24C, the daily newspaper SME reported.
And in the neighboring Czech Republic a 47-year-old homeless man was found frozen to death in the eastern city of Karvina, where the mercury has dropped to minus 29C (minus 20F).
In Romania, six died over the past 24 hours, bringing the toll to 14 over the past six days, the health ministry announced.
These included a baby who died in an unheated house in the northeastern town of Iasi, a ministry spokesman said.
Some 346 people, homeless or suffering from hypothermia, have been taken to hospital or rescue centers over the past 24 hours as temperatures fell to minus 32.5C (minus 26.5F) in the center of the country, officials said.
In Bulgaria, two died in the coldest weather in a century in some parts of the country, bringing the overall toll to 10, weather officials and media said on Wednesday.
The temperature descended to minus 29.4C (minus 20.9F) in the northeastern city of Knezha and minus 31.4C in the northern town of Sevlievo.
In Latvia, a man was reported to have died in the central town of Ogre on Tuesday evening, said the state fire and rescue service, after an open fire appeared to have got out of control.
A further three people died over the weekend in similar incidents.
In Italy, snow caused traffic chaos in the northern cities of Bologna and Milan and trucks banned from the roads in the central regions of Marche, Tuscany and Umbria until further notice.
As bad weather halted all work around the beached cruise liner Costa Concordia, forecasters predicted more snow and colder temperatures in the days ahead, with a low of minus 20C (minus 4F) in the Alps.
Temperatures also plunged in France to seven degrees below the seasonal average, according to the national weather service, and southern areas were hard hit by snow and ice.
In Corsica, most mountain passes were closed by heavy snow and power cuts hit some 60,000 homes in the island and neighboring French mainland.
Authorities in Switzerland, Belgium and Germany scrambled to provide extra beds in the warmth for hundreds of homeless people.
But the Dutch were putting on their skates, staging the first marathon of the season on frozen canals and hoping that the ice would be thick enough to hold a classic 200-kilometer (125-mile race) for the first time since 1997.
