A cold snap across Europe killed 13 people in Poland over the New Year as avalanches and skiiing accidents left at least 10 others dead in the Alps, police and rescuers said Monday. As temperatures plunged to minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 Fahrenheit) in Poland at the start of the year, the number of cold-related deaths rose to 122 so far this winter, police said.
Most victims were homeless men aged 35 to 50 who died of hypothermia while drunk, they said. In the Swiss Alps avalanches killed at least five people with three others missing, emergency services and police said. The first avalanche hit on Sunday in the central Bernese Alps, killing one skier. Emergency services were searching survivors from another avalanche that struck half an hour later.
Emergency services were unable to restart the search on Monday amid the difficult weather conditions, said Theo Maurer of Switzerland's mountain rescue services. In western Switzerland's canton of Valais, a mountain guide and his client were hit by an avalanche on Sunday, officials said.
The guide was able to get out alive but his client died, with the body found buried under 80 centimetres (32 inches) of snow. Steady snowfall overnight and all day Monday led to several road accidents and caused rare delays in the Swiss public transport system. A 32-year-old German tourist was killed in eastern Switzerland's Ofen mountain pass, after her motor home collided head-on with a car that skidded on black ice, police said.
In western Austria rescue officials said they found the bodies of two German skiers, aged 18 and 19, who had fallen into a ravine. Another avalanche hit mountains on France's border with Italy on Friday, killing three people, French police said.
Western Europe is shivering through one of its coldest winters in decades with heavy snowfalls causing serious disruption to road, rail and air traffic over the Christmas and New Year holiday periods. In southern France a number of high-speed trains were delayed for up to two and a half hours near Cavaillon and in the Lyon region, state railway operator SNCF said after France's second city was blanketed by 10 centimetres (four inches) of snow.
At Lyon's Saint-Exupery airport 13 flights were cancelled. The nearby Alpine city of Grenoble recorded 20 centimetres (eight inches) of snow, a figure unseen since November 2005, causing serious disruptions on roads. In Britain, some 60 revellers were stranded for three days at the Tan Hill Inn, England's highest pub, standing 1,700 feet (518 metres) above sea level, in the northern Yorkshire Dales after snowstorms on New Year's Eve.
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