On Feb. 6, around 70,000 people throughout Serbia remained snowed in at their homes in rural areas, where roads are impassable due to high snow banks and low temperatures.

After a state of emergency was declared on Feb. 5, additional machinery was being mobilized to clear the roads in the most vulnerable areas, primarily in Sjenica.

Ten people have been found dead in the snow drifts to date, while plow crews are yet to find an elderly man from the village of Vrapce in the municipality of Medvedja, last seen on Jan. 25 at a military base in that village.

Emergency action teams and the Serbian Armed Forces are attempting to break through to 50-odd snowed in villages in the mountains in the Toplica County, where around 2,200 people are cut off from the world.

Roads to villages in mountainous parts of the Prokuplje municipality are obstructed by snow, while conditions are direst in the villages of Bukoloram, Rgaje, Mrljak and Vlasovo, where about 100, mostly elderly villagers, are shut in by snow.

School will be out this week, the Serbian Ministry of Education and Science has decided, while daytime care has been organized for children through to grade four.