At least 17 weather-related deaths were reported over the weekend.

Moscow's death toll from Siberian temperatures jumped to at least 79 after three more people froze to death overnight Saturday. Another 20 were hospitalised with hypothermia, the Interfax news agency said.

Temperatures in the Russian capital eased slightly to about minus 18 Celsius (minus 0.4 Fahrenheit), after reaching as low as minus 23 C (minus 9.4 F) overnight.

In Estonia, where temperatures fell to minus 26 C in the southeastern part of the Baltic nation, several fires were caused by overheating, killing two people Sunday.

Fire engines from the Soviet era had to be taken out of mothballs as they were more effective in resisting the icy temperatures.

Two more people died from cold in Lithuania over the weekend, bringing the total to eight and about 100 fires were caused by faulty heaters.

Three elderly people also died in Ukraine, raising the total to 21 deaths since temperatures dropped at the start of last week.

Five deaths from hypothermia were reported in neighbouring Poland, where rail and road traffic was seriously disrupted Sunday, bringing the total of people to have died from the cold since October to 127

In Turkey, a man died of exposure after walking in snow-covered mountains in the north of the country, the Anatolia news agency said.

And in eastern Germany, a man died in a pile-up caused by black ice.

Across the northern swathe of Europe, from Russia across the Baltics to the Scandinavian states, authorities sought to keep energy supplies running, road and rail traffic circulating and health authorities alerted in the midst of the extreme conditions.

In the Moscow region, authorities resolved a number of cases of failed heat supplies to homes and traffic problems caused by heavy snowfall, news reports said, while regions struggled to keep ageing heating systems operational.

Forecasters there said temperatures would fall on Monday to minus 24 C (minus 11.2 F) but would rise later in the week to minus 12 C (minus 10.4 F) on Thursday.

In Turkey, heavy snowfall swept across the north and east on Saturday, isolating more than 3,600 villages and cutting off electricity supplies to hundreds of others.

Rescuers took more than 11 hours to transport a sick woman to the nearest hospital 50 kilometres (30 miles) away.

Elsewhere, cold conditions provoked large numbers of road accidents.

The cold front reached eastern parts of Germany overnight Saturday with temperatures dropping from freezing to minus 19 C in less than 24 hours.

Icy roads also caused many accidents in the Czech Republic, including a crash between three cars that injured seven people in the east of the country.

In Sweden, at least 500 car accidents were reported due to difficult driving conditions.

In Denmark, snow and ice shut down Copenhagen's airport for several hours on Friday and Scandinavia's main airline SAS cancelled 144 flights on Saturday. but air traffic was returning to normal on Sunday.

Gas supplies to several European countries have also been disrupted as Russian officials concentrated on ensuring supplies for Russian households.

Poland's national gas company said deliveries were reduced to major industries to ensure supplies to consumers.

Italian energy group ENI said that Russian gas deliveries had fallen short of ordered deliveries for a sixth day on Sunday.

Meanwhile an explosion on a Russian gas supply pipeline, attributed by officials to sabotage, cut supplies to Georgia and Armenia and looked likely to take several days to repair.

Last week Russia's own gas supplies were reduced by 10 percent.

related report

Moscow freeze kills five more, with ageing infrastructure tottering
Moscow (AFP) Jan 21 -- Five more people froze to death in Moscow overnight as extreme cold continued to grip Western Russia Saturday and authorities struggled to keep ageing heating systems operational across the country.

The latest five deaths announced by Moscow's medical emergency service brought to at least 76 the number of people killed in Russia's lethal deep freeze of the last week.

In addition to the dead, 19 people were hospitalised suffering from hypothermia, the official ITAR-TASS news agency said, noting that most of the victims were homeless people or were in an inebriated state.

The Siberian temperatures in the capital eased slightly from earlier in the week, reaching on Saturday minus 23 degrees Celsius (minus nine degrees Fahrenheit) in the city and minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit) in the surrounding region.

But high winds meant the relative "warming" was almost imperceptible and temperatures were again expected to drop come Monday.

Homeless people continued to have special dispensation to huddle in metro station entrances, while the usual open-air street traders were largely absent.

Pundits continued to speculate on how long Moscow's ageing heating system would be able to cope, after a number of heating break-downs in the city and a warning by the head of the UES electricity monopoly, Anatoly Chubais, that the system was working at its limits.

"We think the heating system will hold out, but it's really like reading the tea leaves," the head of the upper house of parliament's industry committee, Valentin Zavadnikov, told Kommersant newspaper.

"The system needs reforming so we don't have to rely on guesswork," he said.

Other parts of Russia continued to shiver at even colder temperatures.

Temperatures in the Volga region and in northwest Russia were forecast to remain as low as minus 40 Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit).

Federal officials had ordered the dispatch of emergency fuel supplies to affected regions, including 60,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil to be sent to Saint Petersburg and nearly 400,000 tonnes of coal to the Russian Far East, Kommersant said.

Accidents caused by exploding gas canisters in people's homes continued to cause injuries.

Eleven residents were injured when a gas cylinder exploded in a housing block in the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg, Interfax said, quoting emergency services.

Kommersant reported that 7,000 people had been left without heating due to technical problems in the city of Chelyabinsk, in the Ural mountains.

Transport also struggled to cope, with around 50 cars stuck in snow on the Moscow-Volgograd highway near Voronezh.

Emergency services had to dig out three people whose car had became completely buried by snow, Interfax said late Friday.

In Moscow the cold has snapped trolley-bus wires, obliging the city authorities to lay on on extra diesel-powered buses.

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