Europe continues to battle severe freezing weather that has killed hundreds of people, with transport and navigation services badly hit across the continent cutting off tens of thousands of people.

Thick ice has closed hundreds of kilometres of the Danube river in half-a-dozen countries and confined scores of ships to port on the busiest European waterway, officials said on Thursday.

Serbia - one of those countries to stop using the Danube - has now banned navigation on all of its waterways.

Jonah Hull reports from Kraljevo, in central Serbia.