By SPA
Beijing : Snow storms that have battered many parts of China over the last three weeks have killed at least 60 people and caused billions in damage, the Civil Affairs Ministry said Friday.
The storms have already crippled transportation during China’s biggest holiday travel season, leaving people stranded in cars on frozen highways, without heat and lights in homes and fighting each other for rare train seats.
The freakish weather is China’s worst in five decades and paralyzed the country’s densely populated central and eastern regions just as tens of millions of travelers were seeking to board trains and buses to return home for this month’s Lunar New Year holiday.
Between Jan. 25-31, a total of 5.8 million passengers were stranded throughout the railway system, said Zhao Chunlei, deputy director of the Regulation Department of the Ministry of Railways, according to a report of the Associated Press.