More on the cold snap in Europe...

13 more deaths in Europe due to the cold...

Europe's cold snap claimed up to 13 more lives as the region battled another day of icy weather and eastern Europe felt the effects of Russian gas cuts.

Poland's interior ministry said on Thursday that six more people had died in the country, taking its death toll from hypothermia to 82 since November, 23 of them in recent days.

Five people, including three homeless, also died in Ukraine's southern Kherson region where temperatures plummeted to minus 19 degrees Celsius (minus 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the ministry of emergency situations.

While German police said on Thursday the cold snap had claimed another two victims since Monday, both found in the west of the country where temperatures plunged to minus 16 Celsius.

Heavy snow on the northern shores of the Mediterranean also left the French port of Marseille paralysed, with its airport remaining closed well into the day and 10,000 homes going without electricity overnight, officials said.

Road and rail transport suffered massive disruptions with schools, nurseries and universities closed as a result.

French weather services said between 20 and 40 centimetres of snow fell on the Bouches-du-Rhone region - closing six major motorways around France's second city.

Along France's southern coast towards Spain, the airport at Toulouse was also closed until midday and motorways were also refusing to accept heavy vehicles, police added.

The German weather office said on Thursday this winter ranked among the coldest in a century. In some areas, temperatures of under minus 20 Celsius were recorded overnight.

In the east German city of Schwerin police hauled a drunken man, who had decided to take his car for a spin on a local lake, from the freezing water after the ice gave way beneath him.

Elsewhere, the Netherlands hosted for the first time in 12 years a skating championship on natural ice on the frozen lakes of a nature reserve northeast of Amsterdam.