ATHENS — "Since Monday, many parts of the country and especially the Attica region were confronted with extreme weather phenomena that caused serious problems to the power and water supply," stated government spokesperson Christos Tarantilis at the start of the daily online press briefing on Thursday.

"Unfortunately, many of our compatriots had a hard time. We completely understand the difficulties they faced and our first priority, as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said earlier to his New Democracy parliamentary group, was not to have fatalities or people trapped on the roads and to maintain communications and supply of villages, which are often snowbound".

As Tarantilis said, "this snowfall was one of the most severe in the last 40 years in Greece and the state mechanism mobilised from the first moment, while the government acted preventatively wherever possible, with the protection of the citizens as its guideline."