MADRID, Jan 9: A rare, heavy snowfall in central Spain closed Madrid’s airport and paralysed city traffic while several rivers in Germany were frozen as much of Europe endured Siberian conditions on Friday.

Russian gas cuts to several European countries this week have aggravated the effects of the bitter cold which has embraced much of the continent since the end of December.

But not everyone was unhappy about the cold snap, with the Dutch taking the opportunity to rediscover the pleasures of skating along iced-over canals and lakes.

“What I love most is the crunching of the ice under the skates and the sensation of gliding,” said Marie-Therese Sluijters-Rompa, a 62-year-old retiree who came to the iced-over canals of the western Dutch village of Kinderdijk to skate with her husband.

“It is a little piece of heaven,” she added.

Elsewhere, however, the freezing conditions caused widespread disruption and difficulty.

At Madrid’s Barajas airport, Europe’s fourth busiest, all four runways were closed for over four hours because of the snow and low visibility, disrupting the travel plans of thousands of people, Spain’s national airport authority AENA said.

Nearly 400 kilometres of traffic jams and dozens of road accidents were reported in and around the Spanish capital.

“Traffic is very difficult in the centre of Spain, many roads are cut especially in the Madrid region where it is recommended not to drive,” a spokesman for the interior ministry’s traffic management agency DGT said.

Several centimetres of snow accumulated in Madrid as temperatures in the region dropped to as low as minus six degrees Celsius.

Office workers gathered at building entrances and windows in Madrid to watch the unfamiliar sight of snowflakes falling in the Spanish capital while others staged snowball fights on city pavements. The snow also forced Spanish football champions Real Madrid to cancel a training session as many players were unable to reach the ground.

Across the border in France, air, rail and road traffic began to return to normal in the region around the southern port of Marseille after two days of disruption caused by heavy snow, which had paralysed the city on Thursday. However, around 1,000 homes remained without electricity.

In Germany, the death toll from the cold snap rose to three and several rivers were frozen over, blocking ship traffic, authorities said.

Drift ice covered 80 to 90 per cent of the surface of the river Elbe from Doemnitz to the Germany’s main port of Hamburg in the north, a spokeswoman for the Water and Shipping Office said.

Some barges had to be freed late Thursday with industrial ice breakers.

Germany is experiencing one of its coldest winters of the past 100 years, with the mercury dropping as low as minus 34.6 degrees Celsius in the mountains in the south.

One person also died from the cold in Poland during the night, bringing the death toll in the country to 83 since November 1, most of them homeless people.

But after several days of bitter weather, conditions began to ease on Friday.

In Portugal, four people died in a fire apparently caused by a faulty heater in an apartment building in the city of Porto. Temperatures that reached as low as minus six degrees Celsius caused authorities in several Portugese cities to issue tents to homeless while snow in the north of the country cut several main roads.

Many schools remained shut and gas-rationing continued for much of industry in order to save reserves,

A quarter of Bulgaria’s 7.6-million citizens, primarily in the big cities, rely on heating from gas-fired plants that have been forced to cut back supply and switch to oil.

On Thursday the Czech presidency of the European Union said the 27-nation bloc was ill-prepared for the gas crisis and needed better contingency planning and infrastructure.

Russia cut supplies for Ukraine’s domestic market on January 1 due to a payments dispute, and then on Wednesday shut off gas transiting through the former Soviet republic to Europe.—AFP