Ice blocked the Czech Republic, transport's gone haywire
No trains, no trams, thousands of travellers stranded
02 December, 13:24
(ANSA) - PRAGUE - Since last night, the whole Czech Republic is blocked by ice: there are no trains linking the major cities - Prague, Brno and Ostrava - and since power lines in the capital are frozen, the city's 22 tram-lines are out of order, which usually carry about 900,000 people per day.
Hundreds of thousands of travellers have spent last night in blacked out trains, no heating. Hundreds are waiting for their train, to no avail. ''Today, most of the trains have been cancelled'', said Petr Stahlavsky, spokesman for Czech Railways. Because of the ice, even the airplane with the Czech soldiers which should have taken off from the military airport in Kbely (Prague) to reach Kabul, Afghanistan, remained blocked.
Nevertheless, air traffic at the Vaclav Havel airport in Prague has not been interrupted. (ANSA).
