Snow drifts reaching up to rooftops kept tens of thousands of villagers prisoners in their own homes on Saturday as the death toll from Europe’s big freeze rose past 550.
More heavy snow fell on the Balkans and in Italy, while the Danube River, already closed to shipping for hundreds of kilometers because of thick ice, froze over in Bulgaria for the first time in 27 years.
Montenegro’s capital of Podgorica was brought to a standstill by snow 50cm deep, a 50-year record, closing the city’s airport and halting rail services to Serbia because of an avalanche.
Photo: EPA
Eight more people were reported to have died in Romania, taking the toll for the country to 65, three in Serbia, one in the Czech Republic and one in Austria.
Polish fire brigade spokesman Pawel Fratcak said on Saturday that defective heating had triggered a spate of deadly blazes in houses and apartments, with eight people killed on Friday night and three the night before.
New Romanian Prime Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu and his defense and interior ministers, who were sworn in only on Thursday, flew by helicopter to the eastern Buzau region, one of the worst hit, on Saturday.
He called on the authorities to work hard to beat the challenges facing them, as food threatened to run out in some villages in spite of air drops.
At Carligul Mic, firemen and volunteers helped people dig tunnels and trenches in the snow reaching to the house roofs in some places.
“I’ve never seen as much snow in my whole life,” resident Aneta Dumitrache, 78, told a photographer.
Authorities said an estimated 30,000 people were still cut off in Romania, and more than 110,000 in the Balkan countries, including 60,000 in Montenegro, nearly 10 percent of the population.
Belgrade has taken steps to limit electricity consumption in the face of threatened shortages, calling on companies to reduce their activities to a minimum.
With Wednesday and Thursday already public holidays for Serbia’s national day, the government has also declared Friday a non-working day to extend into next weekend.
In Kosovo, an avalanche killed several people in a southern mountain village and left nine others trapped in several houses under 10m of snow.
A helicopter from the NATO-led peacekeeping force was dispatched to help with the rescue effort but could not land because of thick fog.
In Italy, Rome was again blanketed by snow for the second time in a week, but authorities seemed to have learned from their previous experience, when the capital was brought to a halt.
Public transport functioned almost normally, thanks to 700 snowploughs and gritters that were mobilized, but other parts of the country, especially the south where snow is extremely rare, were having difficulties.
Meteorologists in Belgium said the country had recorded its longest cold snap in 70 years, with temperatures in Brussels’ suburbs remaining below zero for 13 consecutive days.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to