JERUSALEM: The heaviest snowfall in decades blocked roads across Israel and the Palestinian territories on Saturday, prompting Israeli authorities exceptionally to interrupt the Jewish sabbath to lay on relief trains.

In northern Israel, 45 towns and villages were cut off, police said, adding that they had rescued 200 snowbound motorists overnight.

Nationwide, 29,600 households were without electricity, nearly 13,000 of them in Jerusalem, the Israel Electric Corporation said.

The Jerusalem municipality managed to clear most roads of drifting snow but appealed to residents to stay at home as fallen trees posed a persistent traffic hazard.

The Gaza Strip was “a disaster area with water as far as the eye can see,” the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said.

“Four thousand UNRWA workers are battling the floods and have evacuated hundreds of families to UNRWA facilities,” its spokesman Chris Guinness said.

“We have distributed 5,000 liters of fuel to local pumping stations, but the situation is dire and with the flood waters rising, the risk of water-borne disease can only increase,” he said.

In Gaza, some of those trapped by rising waters were evacuated by fishing boats. A local TV station showed a rescuer standing on the shoulders of another man in a boat as they tried to reach people in a third-floor apartment.

Mohammed Al-Madaina of the Gaza rescue service says efforts were hampered by lack of fuel and power, a result of a tightened Egyptian border closure. Israel and Egypt have restricted access to Gaza since Hamas came to power in 2007.

There has been no respite from the powerful storm sweeping the eastern Mediterranean which is causing mayhem across the region and inflicting extra hardships on Syrians convulsed in civil war and on refugees who have fled the fighting.

Alexa is bringing more snow, rain and cold to swathes of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Egypt.