BEIJING: Premier Wen Jiabao rushed Tuesday to oversee disaster relief efforts as China strained under its severest winter for half a century, with tens of millions of people affected and many areas paralysed.

The snowfalls and freezing temperatures across China have left dozens dead, ravaged power supplies, and hit millions of people trying to return home for the main holiday of the year.

A total of 77.9 million people have been affected by the weather which has covered a swathe of China stretching from Xinjiang in the northwest to Fujian in the southeast, various state newspapers reported.

Wen travelled to Changsha, capital of central Hunan province which has been particularly badly hit, where he met senior officials.

His journey underlined the extent of the problem - he flew out of Beijing on Monday but had to land at an airport in the neighbouring province of Hubei, finally reaching Changsha by train.

"The major task for Hunan is to remove ice," he told state television from his plane.

"Only with the ice gone can electric power lines and railway networks be safeguarded. Major power plants and the south-north railway should also be the focus of our work."

Early Tuesday, a bus overturned on an icy express route and rolled down an embankment in southwest Guizhou province, killing 25 and injuring 13, the government reported.

That toll was on top of at least 24 other fatalities blamed on the weather conditions in the world's most populous nation.

The extreme weather has forced an estimated 827,000 people to be evacuated to safer places following the destruction of 107,000 homes, according to the China Daily.

The weather has also disrupted travel plans for millions of Chinese striving to return home for the Lunar New Year, which falls in early February.

The situation is particularly severe in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, a province in southern China whose export-oriented industries employ millions of migrant workers - many of whom were hoping to get out before the festival.

Tens of thousands were gathered in or around Guangzhou train station, with little prospect of being able to leave any time soon, as the southern part of the crucial rail line to Beijing had been knocked out by the snow.

Similar scenes have been played out in China's largest city Shanghai, after authorities cancelled all long-distance train travel, leaving 30,000 stranded at stations.

Nearly 50,000 people were stranded in the Hunan section of a key expressway from Beijing to the southern coast of the Chinese mainland.

At least a dozen airports around the country were closed Monday, disrupting scores of domestic and international flights.

The big freeze has sharply raised demand for coal but also badly affected road and rail supplies, exacerbating an existing reduction in coal output due to the closure of illegal mines and a traditional pre-holiday slowdown.

Coal is the source of some three-quarters of China's energy, but officials said Monday that supplies for power generation had fallen to just 21 million tonnes - less than half the normal for the time of year.

Over the weekend, Wen ordered all levels of government to prioritise coal supplies to power plants and eliminate all but essential electricity use.

Authorities have since boosted the amount of coal transported by rail to a record high, and a government official said 17 provinces had adopted rationing measures, including deliberate blackouts known as brownouts.

President Hu Jintao, in a telephone call to the Communist Party leader of Hunan, called for a concerted effort to overcome the problems.

"The entire province should act as one and fight with determination to ensure the safety of the people and achieve complete victory in the battle against natural disaster," Hu was quoted as saying by Hunan Daily.

- AFP/yb