Snowstorm covers the eastern Mediterranean closing airports, schools and vaccination centers | Greece

Europe’s busiest airport closed in Istanbul on Monday, while schools and vaccination centers closed in Athens as a rare snowstorm blanketed swaths of the eastern Mediterranean, causing blackouts and havoc with traffic.

The closure of Istanbul airport, where the roof of one of the cargo terminals collapsed under heavy snow, causing no injuries, grounded flights stretching from the Middle East and Africa to Europe and Asia.

Travel officials told AFP it marked the airport’s first closure since it replaced Istanbul’s old Ataturk Airport as Turkish Airlines’ new hub in 2019.

The first snowfall of winter proved to be a major headache for the 16 million residents of Turkey’s largest city, where cars collided with each other, skidding down steep, sleet-covered streets and highways turning into parking lots.

The Istanbul governor’s office warned drivers that they would not be able to enter the city from Thrace, a region that stretches across the European part of Turkey to its western border with Bulgaria and Greece.

Malls closed early, food delivery services closed and the city’s iconic “simit” bagel stands were empty because vendors couldn’t get through the snow.

The storm blocked roads in central and southeastern Turkey before crossing into neighboring Syria, where it piled up more misery in refugee camps in the war-scarred north of the country.

Istanbul Airport served more than 37 million passengers last year, making it one of the world’s largest air hubs.

But critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had long questioned his decision to locate the airport in a remote spot along the Black Sea coast that is often covered in fog in winter.

“Due to adverse conditions, all flights have been temporarily halted for aviation safety,” the airport said in a statement, posting images on Twitter of yellow snowplows circling stranded planes.

The airport extended its suspension twice and said late Monday that service would not resume before 4:00 am (01:00 GMT) on Tuesday. Most of Turkey’s major institutions remained open.

But in Greece, where overnight temperatures plummeted to minus 14 degrees Celsius (6.8 degrees Fahrenheit), the storm suspended a session of parliament and forced the closure of schools and vaccination centers in Athens.

Hundreds of motorists were trapped in cars around the capital, many taking out their anger on television stations, despite attempts by police to seal off motorway entry points north of the city.

“My wife hasn’t eaten anything since morning. We had a small bottle of water between us,” a driver who identified himself only as Christos told Star TV privately. “Everything is frozen.”

Army, firefighters and police began work to free stranded motorists in the early afternoon.

Greek minister for civil protection and climate crisis Christos Stylianides apologized for the chaos and blamed the company that runs the highway for not keeping it open.

A cold snap with sub-zero temperatures and gale-force winds last hit Athens in February 2021, killing four people on the islands of Evia and Crete and leaving tens of thousands of homes without power for days.

Kostas Lagouvardos, director of research at the National Observatory of Athens, told ANT1 TV that the capital had not seen consecutive winters like this since 1968.

Snow fell unusually on several Aegean islands, isolating some mountain villages on Andros, Naxos and Tinos, and covering the beaches of Mykonos, a party island in summer.