Eastern Europe suffers heavy snow and freezing conditions

● Some areas gripped by -30 C temperatures and 3m high snowdrifts

authorities declared emergency measures in nine areas in central and southern parts of the country yesterday amid fresh snow and extremely low temperatures that have blocked roads and cut off villages.

Emergency officials said that more than 120 people and 70 vehicles had been evacuated overnight in the hardest-hit south of the country where three-metre high snowdrifts have formed.

Heavy snow and polar temperatures diving to -30 degrees Celsius ( in some areas gripped parts of Europe last week, leading to more than a dozen deaths, grounding planes and causing traffic accidents.

Serbia’s authorities had banned river traffic on the Danube and Sava rivers due to ice and wind.

Authorities say the country’s Velika Morava river was frozen for the first time in two decades.

Meanwhile in Moscow, two people died and 190 people with hypothermia had to seek medical help between New Year’s Eve and 8 January, the last day of the holiday period in Russia.

The Russian Meteorological Service said the Orthodox Christmas Eve on 6 January was the coldest in Moscow since 1987 when temperatures plunged below -31 C. Moscow schools, however, opened yesserbian terday after the holiday recess.

In Russia’s Urals, schools remained closed in the Tyumen, Khanty-mansiysky, Sverdlovsk and Yamalo-nenets regions where temperatures of -35 C were recorded.

According to Czech public radio yesterday, six people are believed to have died of exposure in the country during the latest cold snap, including in the capital, Prague. Meteorologists forecast freezing temperatures to continue in the coming days.

In Poland, the government said that 10 people died Sunday of cold as the country has been gripped by low temperatures. The deaths bring to 65 the number of fatalities since 1 November when temperatures, especially at night, started falling to freezing levels. The victims were nine men and one woman.