A cold snap across Europe killed 13 people in Poland over the New Year as avalanches and skiiing accidents left at least 10 others dead in the Alps, police and rescuers said yesterday.

As temperatures plunged to minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 Fahrenheit) in Poland at the start of the year, the number of cold-related deaths rose to 122 so far this winter, police said.

Most victims were homeless men aged 35 to 50 who died of hypothermia while drunk, they said.

In the Swiss Alps avalanches killed at least five people with three others missing, emergency services and police said.

The first avalanche hit on Sunday in the central Bernese Alps, killing one skier. Emergency services were searching survivors from another avalanche that struck half an hour later.

Eight helicopters carrying doctors, rescuers and avalanche dogs were despatched to the disaster site and pulled out eight people alive.

Some of the survivors were in a critical condition and three died later in a hospital, including a doctor who had arrived to treat people following the first avalanche.

Rescuers also found the body of a hiker buried in the snow while three other people - two Swiss and a German - were reported missing, police said in a statement.

Emergency services were unable to restart the search yesterday amid the difficult weather conditions, said Theo Maurer of Switzerland's mountain rescue services.

In western Switzerland's canton of Valais, a mountain guide and his client were hit by an avalanche on Sunday, officials said.

The guide was able to get out alive but his client died, with the body found buried under 80 centimetres of snow.

Steady snowfall overnight and all day yesterday led to several road accidents and caused rare delays in the Swiss public transport system.

A 32-year-old German tourist was killed in eastern Switzerland's Ofen mountain pass, after her motor home collided head-on with a car that skidded on black ice, police said.

Several accidents were also reported on the busy motorway linking the cities of Lausanne and Geneva.

A metro line in Lausanne was disrupted for two hours yesterday while in Geneva, public buses were running with delays.

In western Austria rescue officials said they found the bodies of two German skiers, aged 18 and 19, who had fallen into a ravine.

Another avalanche hit mountains on France's border with Italy on Friday, killing three people, French police said.

Western Europe is shivering through one of its coldest winters in decades with heavy snowfalls causing serious disruption to road, rail and air traffic over the Christmas and New Year holiday periods.

In southern France a number of high-speed trains were delayed for up to two and a half hours near Cavaillon and in the Lyon region, state railway operator SNCF said after France's second city was blanketed by 10 centimetres of snow.

At Lyon's Saint-Exupery airport 13 flights were cancelled.

The nearby Alpine city of Grenoble recorded 20 centimetres of snow, a figure unseen since November 2005, causing serious disruptions on roads.

French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand was in hospital overnight on Sunday after skidding on black ice with his scooter, the ministry said, but he was expected to resume his work today.

In Britain, some 60 revellers were stranded for three days at the Tan Hill Inn, England's highest pub, standing 518 metres above sea level, in the northern Yorkshire Dales after snowstorms on New Year's Eve.

A snowplough on Sunday finally broke through the more than two-metre snow drifts, ending the revelry, dubbed Britain's longest-running New Year's Eve party by newspapers yesterday.