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European freeze claims more lives
MOSCOW, Russia -- Severe winter weather has claimed more lives in Europe as ice, snow and bitter winds sweep across the continent. In Russia, which meteorologists say is bearing the brunt of its coldest winter in 15 years, some 25,000 people -- mainly in the northwest of the country -- were without heat as heating systems broke down. Military engineers were to send mobile power plants to help provide heating for one particularly hard-hit town near the northwestern city of St Petersburg. In Moscow, freezing overnight temperatures killed three people overnight on Wednesday, bringing the death toll from the severe cold to 242 since October, municipal emergency services said, quoted by Interfax news agency. Overnight temperatures in the Russian capital this week have hovered between minus 17 and minus 30C (minus 1 and minus 22F). Most of those who have died are homeless people who drank alcohol in excess to keep warm. International aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres appealed on Friday to Moscow authorities and the community to do more to prevent such deaths.
Spokesman Alexei Nikiforov told The Associated Press: "These losses are equal to a military campaign. There is no war, but people are still dying." Moscow's top weather official Roman Vilfand told the Vremya Novosti newspaper that the current low temperatures were "not particularly abnormal." Unusually cold winters "just happen from time to time," he said. Meanwhile in Paris, firefighters said four homeless people had died as a result of overexposure since the weekend. Motorways were shut down in and around the eastern city of Lyon due to snow-related accidents, but most of the country has recovered following weekend storms. Near the southern city of Marseille at least 6,000 olive trees were destroyed by the weight of wet snow after the area received 30 centimetres (one foot) of snow. Up to 10 percent of the valley's nearly 230,000 olive trees may have been damaged, which experts say will affect the harvest for the next five to six years. France's official weather service, Meteo-France, meanwhile issued a new alert for northern France, warning of snow and ice. Late on Thursday, French electricity consumption hit a record high. In Italy, meanwhile, a 64-year-old Italian man was found dead on Thursday along a highway near the northeast Italian city of Trieste, where strong winds, snow and freezing rain forced drivers off motorways to put snow chains on their tyres. In central Italy, firefighters worked through the night to rescue scores of motorists who were trapped on smaller roads due to unexpected snowfalls.
Eight deaths have been recorded in Germany, a dozen in the Baltics, and three in Slovakia. Heavy snowfall also knocked out electricity to around 100 towns in central and southern Ukraine, the country's emergency situation ministry said. Spain appeared to be the next casualty of the severe weather, with the national weather service forecasting heavy snow across the country and authorities urging motorists to stay off the roads. The severe weather also hampered efforts to clean up oil leaked from a tanker that sank off Spain's northwestern coast in November. Shipping routes were disrupted on the northeast German coast due to a 30-centimetre (one-foot) crust of ice which formed around the Baltic. Snow continued to hamper traffic on Thursday in Austria, the Balkans, Hungary and Slovenia. In Britain, air and rail traffic is returning to normal as temperatures creep up following two days of snowstorms that saw London get its heaviest snow fall since 1991, although roads remained icy. Weather forecasters in much of western Europe predict a respite from the unusually chilly temperatures by the weekend.
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