Tens of thousands of households were without electricity and train services throughout large swathes of the centre of the Scandinavian country came to a complete standstill, Swedish news agency TT reported.

The adverse weather conditions also affected maritime traffic as a Swedish freighter with 14 crew on board began sinking in heavy seas off Sweden's southeastern coast, Swedish rescue officials said.

A passenger ferry service between Visby on the island of Gotland to the Swedish mainland was meanwhile cancelled due to the harsh weather.

The extreme conditions also hit ferry services in Denmark where high winds prevented a passenger ferry with some 650 people on board from docking in Copenhagen, the vessel's owners said.

Danish authorities were forced to close two big bridges, over the Great Belt and Oeresund strait, to car traffic because of concerns over strong winds. Train services operating in the Great Belt's tunnel were suspended for an hour before partially resuming on a single track.

The south of Finland was hit by heavy snow and rainfall, temporarily leaving more than 6,000 homes without electricity. Emergency services reported dozens of minor accidents but no deaths due to the storms. Further snow and rain were expected on Wednesday.

Meanwhile an oil platform with 75 people on board that broke loose from a tugboat off the coast of Norway in severe weather on Tuesday was still adrift in the North Sea a day later.

The crew was on board but was not believed to be in any danger.

earlier related report
Floods, storms claim 22 more lives in Turkey
Diyarbakir (AFP) Turkey, Nov 1 - Floods and storms claimed 22 lives in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast Wednesday and wreaked havoc in other parts of the country, officials and media reports said.

Wednesday's deaths brought to 27 the toll in the southeast since Friday, when unusually heavy rains began to pound the poverty-stricken region.

Fourteen of the dead were passengers on a minibus swept away by floodwaters as it travelled here overnight from nearby Mardin, Diyarbakir governor Efkan Ala told NTV television.

A woman, her four-month-old daughter and four-year-old son drowned when their house in Cinar town was flooded and a body was found in the town of Bismil, a crisis center set up here reported.

Military units with helicopter and dinghies rescued dozens of people stranded on rooftoops or in inundated streets as water levels rose by one metre (3.3 feet) in some areas.

The water also destroyed several houses in the region, where schools in rural areas remained closed Wednesday.

"The situation is under control," Ala said, but warned that more rain is expected in the area later in the day.

In the town of Silopi, on the border with Iraq, siblings aged three and four drowned when their home was flooded, while a 70-year-old woman was killed when her house collapsed, district governor Haci Mehmet Kara told the Anatolia news agency.

Many houses in the southeast are shoddily built, often of mud brick, and are highly vulnerable to floods and earthquakes.

A woman aged 30 died in Kilis, west of here, as a raging storm demolished the bus stop where she had sought shelter as it also blew away rooftops and toppled trees and power poles, Anatolia reported.

Five people were killed and two were reported missing at the weekend in other provinces in the region, where the floodwaters damaged hundreds of buildings.

Vast stretches of cotton fields, a major source of livelihood in the area, were innundated.

Heavy rains also struck the west of the country on Wednesday.

In Beykoz, a suburban area of Istanbul's Asian side, about 1,000 buildings were flooded, including a school where some 100 children were stranded for several hours, NTV reported.

The authorities ordered schools closed for two days and said some schoolhouses would be used to shelter people who had lost their homes.

On the southern, Mediterranean coast, a stream burst its banks in the tourist-frequented Manavgat region, flooding the lower floors of many hotels and blocking a main highway for several hours, Anatolia reported.

Restaurants and cafes at Manavgat's scenic waterfalls were also submerged, it said.

Related Links
Learn about Climate Science at TerraDaily.com