In Romania heavy snowfalls caused the cancellation of about 60 train services and blocked several roads, with a policeman recounting how he had helped to deliver a baby by taking instructions from stranded medics.

"The ambulance service called me and told me what medicine to give her to relieve her pain," 25-year-old Dorin Parsoaga told AFP of the labour and delivery at the mother's home.

A doctor eventually arrived at the house in the northern Poienei region, one of the areas worst hit by the heavy snowfalls that also blanketed southern Romania, which borders Bulgaria.

In the southern department of Calarasi, about 300 people spent the night in a hospital and the town hall after being forced to abandon their cars because of the weather, authorities said.

The weather also disrupted Bucharest where schools were shut while roads linking the capital to the southern city of Pitesti and the Black Sea port of Constanta were closed.

In Bulgaria authorities shut roads and declared a state of alert in five northern villages cut off by snow, while the airport in the capital Sofia halted operations Monday morning, the civil defence service said.

The country recorded its heaviest snowfalls in the northeast areas bordering Romania, with about 60 centimetres (24 inches) of snow dumped in the Ruse and Silistra regions. Around 40 schools were closed, officials said.

About 160 localities were without electricity Monday, most of them in mountainous southern regions of Kardjali and Haskovo.

The weather also caused traffic jams in the capital with public transport delayed by between 20 and 70 minutes, the municipality said.

In Switzerland rescuers told Monday how they nearly missed a "miracle" skier who lay trapped under snow for 17 hours at the weekend.

The 21-year-old man spent the night trapped in 50 centimetres of snow near the southwestern village of Evolene before being freed on Sunday.

"Everyone agrees that 17 hours with one's face buried in the snow is quite extraordinary, it is, according to commonly-used terminology, a miracle," mountain guide and rescuer Pierre-Yves Terretaz told Le Nouvelliste newspaper.

Eight people died in avalanches in Italy at the weekend while a German was killed on Austria's Pitztal glacier and two people in the French Alps.

burs-br/mb

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.