January 4, 2003	Saturday	Shawwal 30, 1423

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PARIS, Jan 3: Violent weather wreaked havoc across Europe on Friday, with nearly 200 people freezing to death in Poland, two killed by storms in Germany and floods threatening several European countries.

Most of the 183 victims of Poland’s bitterly-cold winter were men who died of hypothermia after drinking heavily and falling sleep outside, police said.

Floods washed out parts of southern Belgium, took out Czech railways, and threatened northern Portugal, after rains and winds whipped up across western and central Europe on Thursday night.

In Slovakia, a 51-year-old woman was killed and 15 injured, including four seriously, when the bus they were riding in spun out of control in high winds and crashed into a hillside.

In southern Germany, a 13-year-old boy was killed when a tree fell on a car being driven by his father, who was seriously injured.

An 18-year-old driver also died when his vehicle crashed on a snowy highway in Henstedt-Ulzburg, northern Germany.

Over 20 people were injured throughout the country in storm-related accidents, and gusts up to 200 kilometres per hour damaged buildings, roads and rail lines.

Makeshift sandbag barriers were erected to defend towns and houses, but the Rhine continued to rise near the western city Cologne, threatening to spill into the old city centre by Saturday.

Storms also swept through Switzerland, injuring at least seven people.

Four were injured near the capital Bern when a tree fell on their car, and two more received light injuries near Zurich.

The seventh person, a woman, was hit in Bern by a flying sheet of corrugated iron propelled by the winds.

Government officials in the resort town of Davos also put out avalanche warnings for the Alps, where warmer temperatures combined with fierce winds turned ice ledges into potentially deadly risks.

Bern authorities said at least 2.7 million dollars would be needed to clean up their canton alone.

In Italy, a third of Venice was flooded, including the famed Saint Mark’s Square.

“This winter has been a real disaster,” Venice mayor Paolo Costa said, referring to flooding that kept much of the city under water for half of November.

In northeastern Czech Republic, a train jumped the tracks on Thursday night after hitting a tree which had fallen across the tracks, but there were no injuries.

Mudslides also shut down some 20 rail lines throughout the central European country, and a number of regions went on high alert after waters rose in the Vltava and other Czech rivers.

In Belgium, rivers burst their banks, and there was major flooding in the southern Ardennes forest.

A woman went missing while riding her bike near a central river.

Rescuers were still hoping to find another woman who fell into a northwestern river on Sunday during a storm.

In Portugal, also besieged by floodwaters, rescue workers searched the northern Douro river for up to three cars thought to have been swept away after a landslide.

Divers joined firefighters at the accident site near Armamar, located in Portugal’s port wine region, to determine if a substance that has appeared on the river’s surface could be petrol from the submerged cars.

Police are also looking for a Spanish tourist who was reported missing near the Douro on Thursday and may have been caught up in a landslide.

Railway tracks linking the country’s main cities, Lisbon and Oporto, were closed, with 300kms of track under water.

Southwestern Britain had clear skies on Friday for the first time in days, but a spokesman for Britain’s environment agency warned: “We are not 100 percent out of the woods.”

A total of 128 flood warnings were still in place on Friday around Britain, and further rainfall was forecast for the day.

In France, one man was injured on Thursday when a tree fell on his car and flooding occurred in Normandy and Picardy regions.—AFP