ANKARA, Feb 17, 2008 (AFP) - A cold snap and heavy snow falls over the past few days have killed two people and led to widespread disruption in Turkey, local media reported on Sunday. In Turkey, two men, aged 73 and 37, died from hypothermia in the northeastern city of Giresun and the northwestern city of Bursa, Turkish news agency Anatolia reported. Traffic in the country's biggest cities, the capital Ankara and Istanbul, was treacherous, with a blanket of snow causing a number of road accidents. Authorities have advised the 15 million residents of the cities to avoid travel and a number of roads in the northwest of the country, including the motorway linking Ankara and the city of Konya, have been closed. Elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, the Acropolis in Athens was closed Sunday after large snow falls on Saturday night, a rare occurrence in the Greek capital. The temperature in the centre of Athens fell to zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) with snow measuring about 15 centimetres in outlying areas of the city. Temperatures in some parts of Turkey have fallen to minus 20 degrees Celsius, forcing the closure of schools in the north of the country on Monday and Tuesday.
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