January 14, 2003	Tuesday	Ziqa'ad 10, 1423

NEW DELHI, Jan 13: Wide swathes of tropical Bangladesh, Nepal and India remained gripped by a savage cold wave on Monday that has killed nearly 1,200 since Christmas and left millions shivering.

Dhaka meteorologists warned on Monday that Bangladesh’s coldest winter in years, which has killed 540 people since mid-December, was tightening its icy grip after offering a short respite.

“The cold spell is easing slowly, but another one is likely to sweep the country by the end of this week, but not as severe as the one in the past days,” a state meteorologist said.

The dense fog that has shrouded the country for the past week and disrupted transportation would remain for some time, he warned.

There was no sun for Dhaka again Monday as the mercury remained around 11 degrees Celsius.

The lowest temperature recorded on Monday was 6.4 degrees Celsius in southwest Pabna district’s Ishwardi.

India’s cold-related toll jumped to 554 Monday with 36 more people dying from exposure, the Press Trust of India said. Uttar Pradesh has accounted for 248 of the deaths reported nationwide since mid-December.

Bihar, the country’s second most populous state, has reported 72 cold-related deaths, with 54 people succumbing to the frosty temperatures within the last 24 hours.

Icy winds howled through Rajasthan, where the towns of Churu and Pilani groaned at 1.2 and 1.8 degrees Celsius.

Millions of Hindus in India’s frozen north prayed for an end to the cold wave, hoping the annual Lohri festival to mark the start of spring would make the sun shine brighter.

Weather experts, however, poured cold water on the hopes of the millions who Monday lit Lohri bonfires in cities, towns and villages, warning the chilly temperatures were likely to last.

“We don’t expect the cold wave to subside in the next two days at least,” Northern Hemisphere Analysis Centre Director Onkari Prasad said in Delhi, where temperatures crashed to a record 3.7 degrees Sunday.

“But we believe that Lohri, which is also the beginning of our harvesting season, will wipe out the cold and tomorrow we will see the sun dance in the skies,” said R.P. Tandon, a Lohri organiser.

Heavy fog Monday made for a gloomy day in the northern states of Haryana and Punjab, disrupting rail, air and road traffic, officials said in the joint capital of Chandigarh.

All of northern India has suffered prolonged brown-outs for the past two weeks as electricity consumption shot up by up to 20 percent amid cold-related demand.

State authorities have begun to dole out blankets to Bihar’s poorest, many of whom have moved to schools and government buildings to shelter from the wind-aided cold wave, officials said.

In Uttar Pradesh, the city of Kanpur last week recorded an all-time low of zero degrees Celsius.

On Monday, Kanpur and adjoining areas continued to grapple with bad weather as the mercury hovered at three degrees Celsius.

Thick fog blurred once-bustling Kanpur and icy winds from the Himalayas fractured road and train traffic, officials said.

In Nepal, 41 people, many of them former child workers, have died this month in a bitter cold wave sweeping the Himalayan kingdom, state radio said Monday.

Exposure to the cold in the southwestern Terai region, a populous and largely poor lowland area bordering India, was responsible for their deaths.

This winter has been harsh in the Himalayan kingdom, with temperatures Monday at one degree Celsius in both the Terai and the capital Kathmandu.

Nepalese radio said 11 of the 41 people who died of cold were children released from bonded labour last year.

Up to 60,000 bonded labourers, condemned to work like slaves by generations-old tradition, were declared free last year by the government. —AFP