Temperatures as low as minus 36 degrees Celsius crippled power grids, burst frozen water pipes and caused thousands of road accidents in a swath of eastern Europe from the Baltic states in the north to Turkey, Greece and Italy.

In Greece, rescuers struggled to save the 16-man crew of a cargo ship stranded in heavy seas in the Aegean Sea.

The Arctic weather conditions are expected to affect much of central Europe at least through to Thursday.

Even as temperatures warmed slightly in Russia, where more than 60 people have died since the cold snap began last week, bone-chilling cold claimed 26 lives overnight in neighboring Ukraine, the health ministry said.

A total of 77 Ukrainians have died since temperatures plunged last week, and more than 400 people have been hospitalised, most of them suffering from frostbite and various stages of hypothermia.

Several deaths were reported today in Poland, where the toll stands at 39 since last Thursday, and 161 since the onset of winter.

Six more fatalities were reported in Turkey, bringing the total for the week to 17. In Romania a 55-year-old man died of hypothermia this morning, the 16th to succumb to cold in recent days, while in Germany the toll climbed to five when a 63-year-old man died in his unheated apartment in Senftenberg.

A neighbor found him slumped over a table in his kitchen, where the temperature was minus 15 degrees C.

In the Baltic state of Estonia, three more deaths from cold were reported this morning, while in neighboring Latvia - a country of only 2.3 million - the toll climbed to 40 after six more died overnight.

The near-record colds have also strained heating systems, wreaked havoc on transportation networks, and kept hundreds of thousand of children out of school.

In Estonia, blazes broke out in houses where desperately cold residents attempted to melt frozen pipes with open fires.

A passenger ferry from the western island of Vormsi to the mainland took nine hours to make a 30-minute crossing when the ship got stuck on Sunday in frozen waters of the Baltic Sea.

In the western Lithuanian city of Telsiai, some 30 multistory buildings were without heat because of broken pipes, and in nearby Gargzdai half the city lost its heating after a breakdown in a centralised power system.

Hundreds of residents in Bucharest were stranded without heat because of low gas pressure.

Meanwhile, the Romanian capital’s electricity grid has been affected, resulting in short blackouts, according to the state-run power company.

About 1,200 schools and 250 pre-schools were shut in Poland, with hundreds of others closed in Greece, Italy and Romania.

Snow flurries and slick ice caused hundreds of road accidents across Turkey, a few of them deadly, and disrupted air and sea traffic.

At least six people died and some 50 others were injured in the main cities of Istanbul and Ankara in various accidents, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The white winter blanket was especially problematic in Istanbul, a metropolis of 12 million inhabitants, where more than 720 vehicle crashes have been recorded since yesterday.

Flights in northeast Turkey have been cancelled, and the airport in the Black Sea town of Trabzon has been closed because of snow.

At least four airports were also closed in Greece.

In Poland a number of public transport buses broke down, while trains were running late as rails cracked and electric cables snapped.