Several die in Poland as icy weather continues to sweep across Europe

Freezing conditions cause multiple deaths and travel disruption, with temperatures plunging below -30C in some regions.

gripping Europe has killed 10 more people in Poland, stranded thousands in snow-covered Turkey and left vulnerable people like refugees and the homeless in dire circumstances.

Double-digit sub-zero temperatures have claimed more than 30 lives over the past few days, many of them people found frozen to death.

Temperatures have plunged to below -20C (-4F) in some regions of Poland, where the centre for national security said 65 people had died of hypothermia since 1 November.

Greece and Italy have also seen fierce cold weather over the past week, with several refugees and migrants dying of hypothermia in both countries. Greece has moved many of its 60,000 mainly Syrian refugees to prefabricated houses and heated tents.

On the island of Moria, there are “more than 2,500 people living in tents, without hot water or heating, including women, children and handicapped people”, said Apostolos Veizis from the charity Doctors Without Borders. He said there were more than 300 people in a similar situation on the island of Samos.

The European Commission said the conditions on the islands and in other camps where refugees are housed were “untenable” but ultimately the responsibility of the Greek authorities.

In Italy, the cold snap claimed two more lives: an 82-year-old man who died in a house without heating near the southern city of Brindisi and a 78-year-old man in a village in northern Sicily.