Aid sent by helicopter as thousands remain cut off in Europe

Poland : Helicopters ferried food and medicine to iced-in villagers on Wednesday as Europe's 12-day-old cold snap tightened its frigid grip on the continent, where more than 400 have died as a direct result.

Eastern countries such as Poland and Ukraine account for more than half this total, and dozens more have succumbed to the weather's secondary effects, such as asphyxiation by shoddy heating.

Heavy snows eased in Bosnia but the bitter cold continued, especially in the south and southeast, where temperatures dropped to minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit.) Thousands struggled without power, including around the historic city of Mostar, where some 15,000 homes lacked electricity.

Uma Sinanovic, a spokeswoman for Bosnia's defence ministry, said areas around Nevesinje and Berkovici in the country's south were especially hard hit.

“The electricity has been down for two days, phone lines are also down in that region,” Dragan Stark of the Bosnian Serb civil protection service added. “It's a disaster.” Bosnian authorities on Wednesday sent civilian and military helicopters to isolated hamlets near Mostar and Kalinovic, bringing much-needed supplies and ferrying sick people to hospitals.

Five choppers delivered basic food stuffs like flour and oil, lowering the supplies down by rope when landings were impossible.

The Bosnian authorities said Wednesday that two more people had died from the cold in the rugged mountainous Balkan nation, raising the toll to seven, while Albania had its first victim, a man aged 37 found dead near Tirana.

Russian authorities announced at least 110 people had died as a result of the cold so far this year, 44 of them in the first week of February alone.

“Weather like this is only once in five years, it's usually much warmer,” Moscow resident Pavel Sterlikov said.

Elsewhere, icebreakers were hard at work to clear parts of the Danube, one of Europe's main arterial waterways, with two stretches of up to 180 kilometres (111 miles) frozen between Serbia's borders with Croatia and Romania.

More than 70,000 people remain cut off from the outside world in Serbia and other Balkan countries. In southern Croatia more than 100 villages were still isolated for the sixth consecutive day.

Miserable conditions persisted in Bulgaria, with violent snowstorms raging in the Danube plain in the northeast, where all traffic has been suspended since Tuesday and where the main border crossing with Romania was closed due to ice.

At least eight people drowned Monday after rivers flooded and a burst dam sent freezing waters into the village of Biser. Authorities continued to search for two missing residents and Bulgaria announced a national day of mourning.

Officials warned that heavy snow storms could trigger floods when the spring melt begins, and the government was implementing urgent measures to strengthen dams and riverbeds.

Ukraine remained the worst-affected country, with hundreds of cars stranded on the Crimean peninsula and at least 131 deaths so far attributed to the cold, while three more people froze to death in Romania, bringing that country's total to 41.

The Hungarian Central Bank, meanwhile, said it literally had money to burn to help the country's homeless. The bank has been pulping wads of its retired forint banknotes and turning them into briquettes, which make useful heating fuel.

Famished wolves scavenged in the isolated, snow-covered Italian village of Trasacco, while keepers at the Berlin zoo imposed a cold-related curfew on the giraffes and antelopes, which will be kept inside for all but 2.5 hours each day.

While conditions have been brutal for much of Europe, residents in the Netherlands were waiting with bated breath to see if the country's canals would freeze hard enough to allow a legendary ice-skating race to take place. AFP