Snow storms hit areas of the Middle East yesterday, with some schools in Lebanon having to close as traffic was restricted to vehicles with wheel chains in the snow-capped mountains, where snowfall measured up to 50cm in worst-hit areas.
Israeli radio said two homeless men in Tel Aviv and Rehovot died from the cold. In Tirat Hacarmel, northern Israel, a man died in an apartment fire that apparently started in a heater, Israel Radio said. A Palestinian man was killed when his roof collapsed while he slept in the Abu Dis neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, a Palestinian radio report said.
In Iran 140 villages in southwestern Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari province were cut off by snowstorms, state radio reported.
Authorities closed the main highway from Tehran to the Caspian Sea coast because of poor visibility in mountain passes.
A meteorologist, Mr Uri Batz, told Israel Radio it had been 50 years since so much snow had hit Israel's Negev Desert areas as far south as Beersheba, where four centimetres fell.