At least three people were confirmed dead and one was missing in the frosty aftermath of a massive blizzard in Bulgaria, reports said Friday, according to dpa. More than a dozen Bulgarian municipalities retained a state of emergency following a 30-hour blizzard which blanketed the Balkan country with snow between Tuesday and Thursday. Though the skies cleared Friday, strong wind and temperatures as low as minus 15 degrees celsius continued hampering efforts to restore traffic, electricity and supplies in nearly 100 villages. Two elderly men froze to death and one woman went missing while trading on foot between villages near Novi Pazar in eastern Bulgaria. In a weather-related death, a 33-year-old kidney patient succumbed to complications in Russe, in northern Bulgaria, because he could not be transported to the hospital for a haemodialysis Earlier, some 70 passengers from two trains stuck in snowdrifts near Silistra in the north-east had to be evacuated, as well as some 30 tourists, 12 of them children, from a chalet in Stara Planina, in central Bulgaria. People, including tourists from the neighbouring Romania, also had to be saved from cars stuck on the roads in the north of the country. An estimated 150 villages was still without power and 50 were still without water Friday at noon. Flights to and from the capital Sofia were still being delayed or cancelled owing to poor weather.
