MOSCOW (AFP) - Twenty four people have frozen to death in western Russia and Moscow switched to a "strict" energy conservation regime as overnight temperatures plunged below minus 30 C (minus 22 F) in the capital and to substantially colder levels elsewhere in the country.
Twelve people, most of them homeless, died of hypothermia overnight in the northwest Russian region of Novgorod around 550 kilometers (240 miles) northwest of Moscow, Interfax news agency said Wednesday.
Separately, authorities collected the bodies of 10 people found on the streets of Volgograd 1,073 kilometers (666 miles) southeast of Moscow, ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
Eight of the Volgograd victims were homeless while the bodies of two young men who had apparently been intoxicated were found at separate bus stops in the city, the report said, adding that 17 people were hospitalized in Volgograd due to exposure to cold.
In Moscow, city health officials said that two people died of hypothermia overnight on the streets of the Russian capital and 15 others were hospitalized because of the cold as forecasters warned temperatures would drop even further in the coming days.
Students at state primary schools were allowed to stay home at parents' discretion and the stalwart Kremlin ceremonial guard service said it may halve shifts around the eternal flame at the foot of the Kremlin walls to 30 minutes because of the cold.
Television news broadcast footage of homeless people crouched or sprawled over steam vents or huddling in entrances to train stations to keep warm and ITAR-TASS news agency said around 40 trolley buses stalled overnight in Moscow as a result of the freezing temperatures.
More than 200 factories in the Moscow area were informed Tuesday they would have their power cut to conserve energy and the business daily Vedomosti said that from Wednesday Moscow "is switching to a strict energy conservation regime."
This would mean targeted power cutbacks to various businesses as well as turning off electricity for billboard advertisements, casinos and gaming halls housed in buildings adorned with piles of neon lights and at construction sites that use powerful floodlights for nighttime work.
Prior to announcement of the latest two deaths in Moscow, officials said that eight people died Tuesday throughout Russia as a result of the frigid weather, caused when Arctic air from Siberia swept over the western "European" part of Russia where most of the country's population is.
In Russia's Volga region, six people drowned when the ice broke under a minibus that was crossing a frozen river near the city of Nizhny Novgorod. The minibus was driving on the ice at a point normally passable in the summer.
"There were 15 people in the vehicle, nine managed to escape and six drowned," an official with the emergency ministry told the Interfax news agency.
State-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom warned power companies throughout the European part of Russia that it might have to reduce gas deliveries by up to 50 percent because of the cold, a spokesman for Russia's power grid RAO EES, Margarita Nagoga, told Interfax.
The MFB stock exchange, a secondary bourse that rents space in a building from another firm, suspended trading early on Tuesday after being among those warned of a possible power shortfall.
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