PARIS (AFP) - Tens of thousands of European travellers were stranded Sunday in rail stations, traffic jams and airports as heavy snow and ice caused massive disruption at the start of the Christmas holiday season. At least 19 people froze to death, mainly in Poland and mostly homeless people or drinkers caught out in temperatures that were glacial across Europe, plunging as low as minus 33 Celsius (minus 27 Fahrenheit) in parts of Germany. Forecasters across the continent are expecting more snow and freezing rain over the next couple of days, but with temperatures rising slightly and the outlook gradually improving in the run-up to Christmas Day on Friday. Roads and railways were closed or disrupted by snow, black ice or floods across northern and western Europe from Portugal to the Netherlands, and flights from British, Belgian, Dutch, French and German airports delayed. The most embarrassing scenes for transport operators hit cross-Channel transport between Britain and France, after the Eurostar passenger service from London to Paris was shut down following at least five breakdowns. Eurostar, the operator of the Channel Tunnel passenger trains, admitted it could not say when services would resume, with more than 24,000 passengers attempting inter-city travel ahead of the Christmas break stranded. French Euro MP Dominique Baudis said he would call for the European Commission to investigate after he and his family were among those stuck. More than 2,000 passengers spent Friday night trapped in the undersea tunnel, some without anything to eat or drink. There were reports of heated disputes on board and some passengers bitterly criticised the company. Approach roads to the ports of Dover and Calais were snarled by tail-backs because of heavy snow and queues of trucks waiting for delayed shuttle trains through the Channel Tunnel. At Paris Charles de Gaulle airport 40 percent of flights were cancelled and the remaining services were leaving an average of one hour late, while the citys second airport Orly was the scene of a strike by security staff. In the Belgian capital Brussels a flight was able to leave just after sunrise for Seville in Spain, but afterwards heavy snow forced authorities to halt all flights from airports in Brussels, Liege and Charleroi. Heavy snowfall also closed Germanys third largest airport in the western city of Duesseldorf, authorities said, and in the Netherlands a dozen flights from Amsterdam Schipol were cancelled. International Thalys trains between Brussels, Paris and Amsterdam were also delayed and Sunday football matches were cancelled as far south as Italy and across much of the north. Meanwhile, a ferocious snowstorm blanketed much of the eastern United States Sunday, cutting power to hundreds of thousands of homes, paralyzing air traffic and stranding motorists. The governors of Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and Delaware declared states of emergency in advance of the storm, the worst to hit the region in decades. But bus service remained suspended and limited Metrorail operations saw trains servicing only underground stations at 30-minute intervals. Heavy-duty diesel-powered trains moved back and forth throughout the night along exposed, above-ground sections of the track to clear and de-ice them. The massive storm at one point stretched some 500 miles across a dozen states, affecting around a quarter of the US population. Much of the East Coast, home to tens of millions of Americans, turned into a winter wonderland, even if the conditions were as perilous as they were scenic. The monster weather system was moving steadily northeastward, blanketing Baltimore with roughly 20 inches, Philadelphia (23 inches, 58 cm) and New York, where the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast near-blizzard conditions and as much as 14 inches of accumulation before the snow tapers off later Sunday. Further north, Boston was facing a similar fate, with blizzard warnings in effect for parts of Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. Some parts of Virginia received more than two feet of snow. Areas in Maryland recorded 23 inches.