Cold Russian Winter Kills 123 People - Tuesday Dec 25,2012

 

A bitter cold spell in Russia has claimed 123 lives in the past 10 days.Temperatures have plunged to around minus 30 degrees Celsius in the Moscow region and minus 60 degrees in Eastern Siberia, as part of a winter being described by local media as the coldest in 70 years

                                                                                        

 

In the past 24 hours, 201 people had to be hospitalised for treatment for hypothermia and frostbite, including 14 children.Since the start of the cold snap, 1745 people were affected, and more than 800 had to be hospitalised.

State television reports on Tuesday focused on a village in Tyva, one of Russia's poorest regions in southern Siberia, where temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius were coupled with an accident at the local heat station which left some 3000 residents stranded in the cold.