Italy braces for new wave of freezing weather

Italy braced for another wave of freezing weather today, even as soldiers worked to free villages trapped in three metres of snow and with the death toll from the cold snap already at 43.

"The cold wave from the Arctic will hit northeast Italy first," said Franco Gabrielli, the head of the civil protection agency who has been put in charge of dealing with the weather emergency.

"Then it will start moving down."

Forecasts said freezing winds were set to pick up later Thursday and bring more snow on Friday and Saturday to Rome. The normally mild-weathered Italian capital is still recovering from its biggest snowfall in decades.

Local authorities in Rome have begun distributing 4,000 spades for local residents. They have boosted the city's stocks of salt to 1,000 tons and have dozens of snow ploughs at the ready after criticism of previous preparations.

Cars in Rome will have to travel with snow chains on Friday and Saturday.

Several people have died of heart attacks while digging snow and there have been cases of truckers freezing to death after being snowed in during traffic.

Hundreds of soldiers meanwhile were deployed in the region of Basilicata in southern Italy to dig out snowed-in villages near the town of Melfi.

Burst pipes also caused flooding in metro stations and a hospital in Turin.

The economic development ministry said the activation of oil-fired power stations and cutting supplies to industrial clients to make up for a decline in gas supplies from Russia had helped restore "balance" in the system.

It said it would begin restoring full supplies to all clients, domestic and industrial from Friday, as fuel supplies from Russia increased.