Strong winds batter Central Europe

PRAGUE/BERLIN - Strong winds battered Central Europe on Sunday, reaching 180 kilometers an hour in the Czech Republic, where two people were killed by falling trees.

The storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of households, Czech electricity utility CEZ said. Winds reached more than 100 km/h in several parts of the country and topped out at 180 km/h on Snezka, at 1,602 meters its highest mountain, Czech Television reported.

In Germany, railway operator Deutsche Bahn closed many routes in northern and central Germany, cutting rail access to cities such as Bremen, Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig.

A soccer match between Dynamo Dresden and Eintracht Braunschweig scheduled in Dresden was delayed by two and a half hours because of winds.

The winds felled trees in the Czech Republic, with one man dying after being hit on a sidewalk in a town in the north of the country and one woman killed by a tree in a wooded area, media reported.

The weather delayed or halted traffic on several railway corridors and slowed road traffic, with a fallen tree blocking one highway just outside of the capital, Prague, the website of newspaper Mlada Fronta Dnes reported.

Prague Zoo closed because of the winds, but Prague Airport was running without problems, newspaper Lidove Noviny's website reported.

The winds also hit Poland, damaging a pipeline at the liquefied natural gas terminal in the port of Swinoujscie. They caused a small leak but no greater damage, according to a spokesman for the state gas pipeline operator, Gaz-System.

Reuters