ATHENS, Feb 18, 2008 (AFP) - Greece on Monday suffered a third day of freezing weather after a night of snowfall isloated scores of villages, paralysed ship traffic and severely disrupted flights through the country. Hundreds of flights at Athens International Airport (AIA) were threatened by poor visibility as a cold front that struck northern Greece on Saturday moved southwards. "The runway is open but the level of visibility does not permit flights," an AIA press officer told AFP. "We had 461 flights scheduled for today but only a dozen have taken off and there will be many cancellations, around 100 so far," he said. Over 150 villages were cut off in the south of the country, mainly in the Peloponnese peninsula, the Cycladic islands and the islands of Crete and Evia, with many of them facing power outages, the civil protection authority said. In Athens, state television footage showed the streets almost deserted as authorities closed schools and warned residents to stay indoors. "These are unusual conditions for Athens, roads to the capital are open but cars need snow chains to move," Athens prefect Yiannis Sgouros told Skai TV. Temperatures were predicted to hover around 0 degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit) on Monday but were expected to rise on Tuesday. All ship traffic from the ports of Piraeus, Rafina and Lavrio near Athens was halted but Greece's main highways were open and intercity trains were running, officials said. "Our concern was to keep road arteries open, and our engineers have worked around the clock for 48 hours," public works ministry general secretary Dimitris Katsigiannis told state NET television. "I don't remember any such conditions in Athens before," he said.
jph/rh/mb