Some 20,000 homes in southern France deprived of electricity amid snow storm

Heavy snowfall bogged down power lines and deprived about 20,000 homes of electricity in southern France on Sunday, utility workers said.

About 140 towns and villages in the southern Aude region were affected by the outages, with about 30 power lines down, officials at the EDF-GDF utility said.

The outages were caused many by falling trees and branches, which buckled under the weight of snow and ice, EDF said. About 100 utility workers were deployed to repair the damage.

A return to full service was not expected before Monday, AP reported. V.A.