Traffic around Germany was held up in several regions as snow blocked roads and ice made driving difficult, police said, with some 70 weather-related traffic jams across the country.

In the northwestern North Rhine-Westphalia region, Germany's most populated, police said there more than 760 accidents from Sunday afternoon thru Monday morning.

Icy conditions in southern Germany near the border with Austria between Passau and Ratisbonne caused a massive pile-up of at least 15 trucks and 20 cars, injuring 18 people.

At least 25 accidents were reported on the main highway near Delmenhorst, northern Germany, due to icy roads, leaving one person seriously injured and many people hurt. The road was temporarily closed.

In Saxony state, in the southeast, the driver of a truck transporting wooden planks lost control of his vehicle near Chemnitz. It hit a car and overturned on the road, blocking both lanes for several hours. The driver, 33, escaped with minor head injuries.

In Britain, motorists were being warned of potentially hazardous road conditions on Monday, with snowfalls expected to hit eastern parts of the country.

Up to five centimetres (around two inches) of snow, as well as hail and sleet, was expected to fall on eastern Scotland and eastern parts of England, ranging from the far south to Northumberland in the north.

There was even a small chance of some snow in London, which in recent years has rarely seen snowfalls.

Temperatures also dipped in France, prompting the government to declare an alert calling for more space in homeless shelters.

Snow was reported in the northwest of the country, and local authorities in Normandy called on residents to limit their travel and to signal any homeless people left out in the cold.

The Meteo France weather service said to expect frigid temperatures of minus five and minus seven degrees Celsius (23 and 19 Fahrenheit) in the coming days in the eastern part of the country.

Portugal, Spain and Belgium were also affected by the cold snap.

This week should be the coldest this year in Portugal, the weather service said, while in Spain, where temperatures were expected to dip to minus 15 Celsius in the center of the country, the government urged motorists to try and stay off the roads.

In the Netherlands, a slight snowfall overnight and freezing temperatures led to what was described Monday morning as "historic" traffic jams equivalent to 560 kilometers (350 miles), or the distance between Amsterdam and Paris.

In Turkey heavy snowfall in almost all parts of the country since Saturday cut off hundreds of villages and disrupted traffic nationwide on roads which were overcrowded by motorists returning home after the four-day Eid al-Adha holiday.

In the central city of Kayseri, a 65-year-old man died Monday after he fell and hit his head on the iced ground while cleaning snow in his garden.

Heavy snowfall in Italy's central Abbruzi mountains forced the closure of schools near L'Aquila.

Blizzards in Albania kept most of the roads closed in the north and the south of the country.

Eight people were killed in a traffic accident near the northern town of Qafa e Buallit during a heavy blizzard on Sunday, police said.

But Swedes, who two weeks ago were battered by strong winds, found themselves enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures and an unusual lack of snow.

"If this continues into February, this will be one of the warmest winters in a long time," Hans Alexandersson, a climate specialist at Sweden's national meteorology institute, told AFP.

Unseasonably warm temperatures in Finland, around freezing instead of the usual minus 15 to minus 10 degrees, have allowed high-speed ferries to continue operating in the Gulf of Finland.

burs/rl