China battles worse weather as holidays loom

Shaoguan: Thousands of troops have been deployed on Saturday as repair teams worked on restoring power to parts of China blacked out for over a week by snow storms.

Chenzhou, a city of four million, has been without electricity for eight days and petrol and food supplies are running low.

"We will strive to partially restore electricity supply in Chenzhou on Saturday," the Xinhua news agency quoted Yin Jijun, an official with China's national grid, as saying.

As much as six inches of snow covered Shanghai on Saturday while the neighbouring provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang issued alerts for blizzards and icy roads.

The government said the disaster has killed 60 and left nearly six million passengers stranded on trains or in railway stations ahead of the Lunar New Year next week.

Some 8,000 freight trains have been delayed in the past week as toppled power lines and icy rails crippled the rail network.