Eight Czechs were swept away in the Tatra mountains near the Polish border early Saturday but one managed to free himself and call the rescue services, the head of the Slovak mountain rescue department, Jozef Janiga, told AFP.

The man's seven companions were found dead after dozens of rescuers and three helicopters were sent to the scene, where Janiga said they had spent the night in tents in spite of the high avalanche risk.

In the Swiss Alps, a 49-year-old German tourist was killed by an avalanche in the eastern Urezza valley in the Graubuenden region Friday, police said, after his wife reported him missing.

The cold snap that has gripped much of Europe in the past week eased off by several degrees in some western parts of the continent on Saturday, but killed another homeless man in Rome and a farmer in northern Italy.

Rome authorities said a man of Indian origin aged 40 was found dead of hypothermia in the old caravan he used as a place to sleep. He was the third homeless person to die of cold in the Italian capital since Monday.

Near Cremona in the north, the body of a 57-year-old farmer was found close to his car, apparently because he had suffered a malaise, collapsed and then died as the temperature dropped below minus 12 degrees Celsius.

Heavy overnight snowfalls in Switzerland on Saturday disrupted air traffic at Geneva, Zurich and the Basel-Mulhouse airports, with the cancellation, delay or diverting of almost 30 flights.

In the French eastern central town in Dijon, 250 train passengers had to spend Friday night in accommodation requisitioned by district authorities. The SNCF national rail service had wanted to get them to their destinations by coach but that proved impossible because the prefect's office for the Burgundy and Franche-Comte regions had banned all heavy vehicles from the roads.

In the area, trains of all kinds, from the fast inter-city TGV to short-distance mainline services, were halted altogether or delayed for up to four hours because overhead power lines were coated in freezing rain.

To the northwest, however, a thaw brought a respite on Saturday, from the Netherlands southwards to Paris.

Dutch road safety officials warned of black ice but roads became manageable again throughout the country. Trains, buses and trams that had been unable to move on Friday were brought back into service.

Staff at Amsterdam-Schipol airport and at rail stations in some Dutch towns provided beds for stranded travellers, but on Saturday flights resumed normal schedules.

In Normandy in northwest France, the EDF national power company announced it hoped to be able to restore electricity "by the end of the morning" to about 2,000 households still cut off after a week of icy temperatures.

In northeast Poland, 3,000 households were still without power on Saturday and more heavy snow left some road and rail traffic disrupted.

A spokesman for PKP railways, Krzysztof Lancucki, said "several locomotives are broken down today. This means big delays" in suburban traffic, but he added that intercity services were unaffected.

The week neared a close with the death of the woman believed to be Belgium's oldest, 109-year-old Maria Verkeyn, in an old people's home in the west of the country, doctors said Saturday.

"She always had lots of energy. Her family and I hoped that she would live to celebrate her 110th birthday next April," said her doctor, geriatric expert Lucien De Cock, according to the Belga news agency.

Centenarians are more at risk of catching respiratory illnesses as cold winter weather arrives, he said, noting that Belgium's oldest ever man, 110-year-old Louis Marion, died in late December 2003.

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