Snow covers swaths of the Holy Land as storm Alexa continues to cause havoc across the Middle East, SIA reports quoting The Guardian.
Meteorologists in Jerusalem said it was the worst storm to hit the city for 60 years, with snow reported to be 50cm deep in some areas.
Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv was briefly closed on Friday morning, and roads between that city and Jerusalem were littered with abandoned cars. Motorists were stranded in their vehicles for up to 12 hours as snow blocked highways, media reported.
Public transport was cancelled and schools were closed for the second day. Thousands of homes were without power as snow-laden trees collapsed, bringing down power lines.
Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem, described the snowstorm as a "tsunami", for which the city council was unprepared.
Residents of Ramallah, in the West Bank, awoke to blizzard conditions and widespread power cuts. Other areas of the West Bank, including the Palestinian cities of Hebron and Bethlehem, were struggling to cope with heavy snowfalls.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld took to Twitter to confirm three evacuation centres had been set up to help more than 1,000 people stranded overnight.
Gaza, whose residents have been forced to deal with 12- to 16-hour power cuts as a result of the severe fuel shortage in the tiny coastal strip, has been affected by heavy flooding as well as the first snowfall for decades. Dozens of people have been injured.
The snow storm, which follows a November of record-high temperatures and glorious sunshine, is the second in the Holy Land within a year. Jerusalem and other areas were also blanketed in snow last January.
Storm Alexa has brought blizzards, torrential rain and icy winds to the region this week. Aid agencies have warned that the weather is catastrophic for hundreds of thousands of refugees living in flimsy tents and makeshift shelters in Lebanon.
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