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Snow causes fresh traffic chaos in Germany

Updated: 2010-12-14 22:03

(Xinhua)

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BERLIN -- Overnight snow deeply hit German traffic again, causing airports shutdown, large number of traffic jams and accidents as well as several injuries, police said on Tuesday morning.

The most populous German state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) was hit extremely hard, with 703 traffic accidents from Monday evening to Tuesday morning. Two people were seriously injured, while another 26 were minor wounded.

A lorry accident between the Lotte-Osnabrueck exit and Lengerich stopped the A1 motorway, causing a traffic jam, police said.

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The snow also paralysed several major motoways. The A2, A3 and A4 were partly blocked, while the A61 was completely closed on Tuesday morning in the direction of Koblenz from the Ludwigshafen exit.

Duesseldorf airport was closed on Monday evening and reopened on Tuesday morning, however, delays were still going on.

Although Germany has experienced several heavy snows this winter, the weather is still "not unusual" in the eyes of experts.

"Up to now only some new records for individual days or short periods have appeared, which is not unusual with respect to the often relatively short time series of observations," said Gerhard Mueller-Westermeier, an expert from German Weather Service Center (DWD).

"A tendency to generally colder winter weather in Europe in the future cannot be expected," said the expert.

In December, Germany has suffered two major heavy snows all around the country, which have caused several casualties and traffic chaos on airports, railways and roads.

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