Big freeze leaves trail of deaths across Asia

In Japan, where at least 63 people have died and more than 1,000 have been injured since heavy snowfalls began last month, troops and volunteers shovelled snow from roofs and roads, while in China's Xinjiang province cattle were dying in the fields in temperatures of -43C and a 25-mile section of the Yellow River froze.

In Bangladesh, at least 20 people have died from exposure, disease and malnutrition over the past three days because of a cold snap there.

In India, residents of the capital awoke yesterday to a temperature around freezing point, forcing officials to shut primary schools for three days. TV footage showed a layer of ice on the grass in parks and on the roofs of cars.

"I was so excited. This is the first time I have seen it (frost)," said a teenage girl wearing a thick sweater.

But thousands of homeless and those without heating were hard hit. And further north, Indian Kashmir continued to shiver as overnight temperatures dipped to -6C.

"It is terribly cold. I feel like we are living in a refrigerator," said 34-year-old housewife Rubina Malik.

For the first time in ten years, parts of the famous Dal lake in the regional capital Srinagar were frozen. Authorities banned skating on the lake after a child drowned when the thin ice cracked.

More than 100 people have died in northern India since December because of the cold. The coldest recorded temperature in New Delhi is -0.6C (30.92F) in 1935.

In Japan workers were trying to clear snow which was up to ten feet deep in some of the worst-hit areas of Niigata prefecture, and to reopen blocked roads in Nagano prefecture.

Many of the dead there were elderly people who fell from their roofs while trying to clear snow, while others were crushed when their houses collapsed under the weight of the drifts.

"It's frightening," said a woman in Akita City, in northern Japan, as local government workers began to shovel snow from her roof.

"There were creaking sounds and I couldn't open the doors because of the weight of snow."

China is in the middle of its coldest winter in 20 years, the China Daily newspaper said. Even in the usually mild province of Guangdong in the south, temperatures dipped as low as 5C on Friday while some local roads have frozen over with more than an inch of ice.

In Xinjiang, where heavy snowfalls and temperatures as low as -43C forced the evacuation of almost 100,000 people earlier in the week, conditions remained testing.

In the province's northern Altay region, temperatures were hovering around -26C after falling to 37C and killing cattle over the past few days, said an official from the local meteorological bureau.