Sharp temperature drop kills dozens in Mongolia

ULAN BATOR - Cold weather has killed 30 people in isolated, wind-swept Mongolia where temperatures plummeted from a warm 23C on Friday to well below zero, local media said.

Most of the victims in the capital Ulan Bator were found over the weekend on the streets and at bus stops, the Daily News said.

Ulan Bator is notorious for its street children, many of them living under manholes to keep warm near the Soviet-era water pipes.

Alcohol abuse among the homeless in the city and across the vast steppe is also widespread and may have been a factor in the deaths, the newspaper said, adding that the victims were aged between 25 and 45.

After a sunny and relatively warm first weeks of autumn, temperatures dropped from 23C to minus 10C in some parts of the country, followed by snow storms.

In Ulan Bator, temperatures dropped to minus 6C.

High winds in the southern Gobi desert blew away dozens of gers, or round, white, felt tents, and damaged buildings.

"There have been no reports of so many accidental deaths for at least five years," the Daily News quoted police sources as saying.

About half Mongolia's 2.7 million population are nomadic herders who live in gers. They tend millions of sheep, horses, cows and camels that graze the meadows covering four-fifths of the country, locked between China and Russia and once the centre of one of the world's greatest empires.

- REUTERS