A cold wave across Europe has left at least 23 dead in the past two days, including several migrants and homeless people. Authorities said ten of the latest victims of the cold died in Poland where temperatures were as low as minus 14 degrees Celsius on Saturday. <br/><br/>In Italy in the past 48 hours the cold has claimed seven lives, including five homeless people, two of them Polish nationals. There was heavy snowfall in central Italy and also in the southeast where the airports at Bari and Brindisi as well as in Sicily were closed yesterday.<br/><br/>Prague's emergency services reported three deaths — two homeless people and a parking lot guard — overnight in the Czech capital, the coldest night so far this winter.<br/><br/>Temperatures in Russian capital Moscow fell to minus 30 degrees overnight and to minus 24 in Saint Petersburg where police found the body of a man who had died of hypothermia.<br/><br/>And in Bulgaria the frozen bodies of two Iraqi migrants were discovered by villagers in a mountain forest in the southeast of the country near the border with Turkey.<br/><br/>Authorities expect the toll to rise as weather conditions are set to remain unchanged this weekend.<br/><br/>The heavy snowstorms reached Turkey, paralysing its biggest city Istanbul where almost 65 centimetres of snow fell, forcing hundreds of flights to be cancelled yesterday. Coastguards also ordered a halt to shipping traffic in both directions through the Bosphorus Strait — one of the world's busiest sea thoroughfares — and the municipal ferry service between the European and Asian sides of the city was suspended.