A brutal cold snap plunging a large swath of Latin America in the most frigid weather the region has seen in decades has claimed dozens of lives, officials said yesterday.

Forecasters said they believe that the worst is over and that temperatures now will begin to inch upward, but officials said the cold snap - which began in the middle of last week - claimed a terrible toll across southern Latin America.

According to the meteorological service in Argentina, where 33 people have died over the past several days, polar air this week sent temperatures plummeting as low as -14°C in the centre of the country, and around freezing in the usually balmy north.

Many of the victims in Argentina were homeless who died on the streets of the capital city Buenos Aires.The southern cone of South America is now at the peak of its winter season.

But even normally tropical areas of Bolivia, where temperatures rarely dip below a balmy 20°C, plummeted to near freezing, killing at least four people, while 12 people were reported to have died in Paraguay, most from hypothermia.

Two of the dead in Paraguay succumbed on Sunday after inhaling toxic fumes from coal-burning ovens.