Snowbound villagers fought off starving wolves and the Danube River iced over as a Siberian frost gripped much of the Balkans for the second straight week, killing at least a dozen people.
Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania all registered record or near-record low temperatures, according to local press reports.
In Karajukica Bunari on the Serbia-Montenegro border the temperature fell to minus minus 29 Fahrenheit. Meteorologists predicted the January 1954 record would fall in the coming days.
According to inland shipping reports, the Danube River was partially iced up in dozens of places, from Hungary to Romania.
“Huge blocks of thick ice are floating on the river. We expect the lower Danube to be completely iced by tomorrow,” the Bulgarian state news agency BTA quoted an official as saying.
The Black Sea coast was badly hit by frozen snowdrifts topping 6 feet and many roads were closed.
In Macedonia, an army captain was found frozen solid just yards from his border post in the Sar mountains on the Kosovo border.
Three people died of cold in rural Croatia, four hypothermia fatalities were reported in Bosnia and four in Albania.
Hospitals in central Bosnia were closed when antiquated heating systems lost the battle against the freeze.
“We are sending patients home and operation rooms are closed except for the most urgent cases,” hospital spokesman Marko Radoja told Reuters in the Bosnian Serb capital Banja Luka, which has recorded its lowest temperatures in 20 years.
In Albania and western Kosovo, villagers in remote areas had to drive off wolves and wild boar searching for food.
The Albanian daily Metropol said a 27-year-old mentally ill man was found devoured by wolves in the mountains near Elbasan, where villages lie six feet deep in snow.