Cold weather across northern India killed 49 people in the 24 hours to midday yesterday, officials said, forcing the closure of schools and sending thousands of homeless to huddle around bonfires. The toll from four days of unusually cold weather, accompanied by thick fog, rose to 103 as reports of more deaths came in from a growing number of States.

?If it continues like this, I may not survive to see another winter,? said Abdul Rehman, an elderly fruit seller in Lucknow, capital of worst-hit Uttar Pradesh State, who sleeps in his wheelbarrow on the street.

Most of the new fatalities were in Uttar Pradesh where 36 people have died since Monday morning. In all, 86 people have died from the cold in the northern State that borders the snow-capped Himalayas.

State authorities have ordered many schools to shut, so children can stay at home and keep out of the cold, and lit dozens of bonfires for the poor and homeless.

State official Navneet Sehgal said the government was doing all it could, including distributing blankets. ?The rest is up to God,? Sehgal said.

Temperatures fell to five degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit) early yesterday in some parts of Uttar Pradesh, India?s most populous State.

The chilly weather also killed four more people in Bihar, to Uttar Pradesh?s east, and authorities confirmed for the first time 10 fatalities in the central State of Madhya Pradesh.

Many of those who have died were labourers or beggars living on the streets. The normally aggressive drivers in India?s capital, New Delhi, had to slow down as thick fog blanketed the city.

Many flights and trains across north India have been delayed by the fog. Weather officials forecast no let up in the cold, saying temperatures would dip further over the week.

Winter temperatures in most parts of northern India are not as extreme as the freezing weather in, for example, North America or northern Europe, but many homeless people die every year because they do not have warm clothes or blankets.