Several people died in Romania while the cold snap claimed a second elderly victim in two days in southern Portugal.

Paris woke up to a thin carpet of snow and an icy chill that caused delays of up to 30 minutes in take-offs at Charles de Gaulle international airport.

High-speed trains operating on the Paris-Brussels and Paris-Calais routes were forced to reduce speed as a security measure, leading to delays.

Highway authorities warned of icy roads over much of northern France.

The Renault auto factory at Sandouville near Le Havre was forced to close because trucks could not get through with components.

Firefighters in the Sarthe region east of Paris rescued 200 children whose school buses became stuck behind a stalled truck.

In Romania, three people including a one-month baby died of the cold, and temperatures in the capital, Bucharest, fell to their lowest level since 1932.

In southern Portugal, a 73-year-old man died at a hospital in Evora, 150 kilometres (95 miles) southeast of Lisbon, due to a chronic respiratory illness made worse by prolonged exposure to the cold, a hospital spokesman said.

A 92-year-old man died at the same hospital Tuesday from hypothermia.

The main hospital in the town of Guarda, 370 kilometers northeast of Lisbon, was forced to cancel all non-emergency surgery because water pipes froze.

Temperatures have fallen to record lows for this time of the year across most of Portugal in recent days causing gas consumption to soar.

Sales of natural gas rose 20 percent in the interior of the country and eight percent in Lisbon during the past three days compared to the same time last week, state-controlled oil and gas company Galpenergia said.

The Rome observatory said temperatures in the Italian capital fell to their lowest level in 200 years, with an absolute record low for the country of minus 32 Celsius (minus 25.6 Fahrenheit) in the mountains separating Umbria and the Marches.

The Evros river in the northern Greek region of Thrace overflowed as a result of heavy rain and snowfall in the Bulgarian uplands, flooding farmland and a village where about 300 inhabitants had to be evacuated, authorities said.

In Switzerland, temperatures in a region called the Swiss Siberia close to the frontier with France, sank to minus 34.4 C (minus 29.9 fahrenheit), which was not quite a record.

Ice 14 centimeters (5.5 inches) thick hampered ship traffic on the canal linking Berlin with the Polish port of Szczecin, and snow fell thickly on the German capital.

In Britain, the cold eased slightly on Wednesday, but forecasters warned that snow and ice would be back on the weekend.

Electricity consumption in Austria hit the highest point since the beginning of the year, and fuel oil suppliers said they were running out of stock. Two people were killed in a pile-up on the A1 highway.

Bulgarian ski resorts enjoyed their highest snowfalls for 20 years. Mountain rescue services warned skiers to stick to marked trails because of the risk of avalanche.

Despite the cold, Pavel Ivanov, 57, stuck to his normal routine of taking a dip in the Black Sea. The BTA news agency said he stayed in the freezing water for 30 minutes.

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