With the weather office warning there will be no respite before the end of the week, police in New Delhi overnight rounded up homeless people and took them to special shelters, an official said.

More deaths, meanwhile, were reported from India's northern Uttar Pradesh state, bringing the toll in the state to 124 and the countrywide toll to 160, according to a tally based on figures released by police and officials.

In Pakistan, major cities as well the country's earthquake-battered areas have been gripped by one of the most severe cold snaps of the last 30 years, meteorological officials said.

More than 30 people are reported to have died from cold-related diseases in the northern Himalayan regions outside the quake zone during the past week, UN and health officials said.

At least 14 people in Nepal have died since the cold weather swept in at the weekend, state radio said.

Temperatures in Pakistan's mountain town of Skardu plummeted to minus 13 Celsius (8.6 Fahrenheit) overnight, Muhammad Saeed, deputy director of Pakistan's Meteorological department told AFP.

Across the country temperatures are three or four degrees lower than average, he added. Last week the eastern city of Lahore had its coldest day in 39 years when the mercury hit minus two degrees Celsius.

Primary schools in north India, meanwhile, have been ordered closed while officials in New Delhi, where the temperatures dipped to a 70-year low of 0.2 degrees Celsius (32.36 Fahrenheit) on Sunday, have warned the elderly and young children to stay indoors.

Srinagar, capital of Indian Kashmir, recorded minus three degrees Celsius (26.6 degrees Fahrenheit) Tuesday, while the northern Sikh pilgrimage city of Amritsar recorded zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).

A doctor in Uri, one of the towns in Indian Kashmir worst affected by a devastating earthquake three months ago, warned that survivors living in makeshift shelters are showing signs of hypothermia and frostbite.

"We have started receiving people with frost bite, pneumonia and other cold-related diseases," said Bashir Chalko, who feared the situation would get worse the longer the cold conditions continue.

Earthquake-hit areas in Pakistani-administered Kashmir and North West Frontier Province, meanwhile, are likely to receive more snowfall between January 14 and 19, weather official Saeed said.

Blizzards and heavy rain over the New Year collapsed or flooded hundreds of survivors' tents in the devastated region.

"It is still very cold here in my tent, but when I think about those in mountain villages who have snow all around their tents I wonder how they are surviving," said Akram Shah, a labourer in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir.

The October 8 earthquake killed nearly 74,000 people, severely injured about the same number and left around 3.5 million people homeless just weeks before the start of the bitter Himalayan winter.

The 7.6-magnitude quake killed at least another 1,300 people in Indian Kashmir and left more than 150,000 homeless.

The World Health Organisation said last week that up to 19 people in the quake zone had died of pneumonia over the past six weeks but that this was a normal mortality rate for the time of year.

Even tropical Bangladesh has not escaped the cold, with temperatures falling as low as 8.1 degrees centigrade (46.58 Fahrenheit) in parts of the normally-sweltering country.

A thick blanket of fog enveloped parts of the country Tuesday, disrupting travel plans of millions of Bangladeshis on the move ahead of the Eid al-Adha festival, officials said.

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