Refugees stranded in Greece suffered sub-zero temperatures and heavy snowfall on Tuesday at camps not designed for winter weather and the government promised those on one island temporary warm accommodations aboard a navy ship.

A mid-winter icy spell and snowstorms have gripped central and southeastern Europe for days, and parts of Greece have been covered in rare snow with temperatures dipping to -20 degrees Celsius this week. Snow also fell in Athens on Tuesday.

More than 60,000 refugees and migrants have been trapped in Greece since Balkan countries along the main, northward overland route to wealthy western Europe sealed their borders last March. Most now live in overcrowded camps across Greece in abandoned factories or warehouses, or in tents which lack insulation or heating.

“Cold, it’s very cold for children – it’s not like Syria,” said Rostam, a 34-year-old Syrian Kurd who has been living in a camp near the village of Ritsona in eastern Greece near Athens for 10 months with his wife and three young children.

Temperatures hovered at -1 degrees at the camp, a collection shipping containers in a forest where clothes left on hanging on lines outdoors had frozen stiff.

Humanitarian aid organizations, including the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, have pressed Greece to quickly transfer those on freezing, snowbound Aegean islands to the mainland or other European countries.

“The situation is very difficult and especially dangerous for children,” said George Protopapas, Greece director of international organisation SOS Children’s Villages.

“Power outages, freezing temperatures, snow and freezing rain have hampered access to some refugee camps and created very hazardous conditions for all those in temporary shelters.”

Conditions were considerably worse on the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos, where more than 5,000 asylum seekers have been waiting for months for their applications to be processed.

Scores of summer tents weighed down by thick snow resembled igloos after several days of icy weather on the island. On Tuesday, the government said it was sending a naval ship to Lesbos to accommodate migrants. It was also scrambling to transfer others to hotels.

“It is important to take immediate measures to ensure that men, women and children are housed in decent accommodation suitable for winter,” the Greek branch of global health charity Medecins du Monde said in a statement.

For some refugees who have been in limbo in Greece for months, things have been worse.

“It’s normal, we’re used to living like this,” said a 25-year-old Syrian who gave his name as Ahmad, one of the first to arrive in the Ritsona camp. “This is not one day or two days, this is 10 months.”

Russian warplanes and their Syrian government allies battered rebel-held areas in and around Aleppo on Saturday, and rebels and aid workers accused them of destroying one of the city’s main hospitals and killing at least two patients.

M10, the city’s main trauma hospital, in eastern Aleppo, was struck as the United States and its allies urged Russia, which is trying to crush resistance to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to halt the bombing and reach a diplomatic resolution.

Saturday’s air strikes focused on major supply lines into rebel-held areas of Aleppo – the Castello Road and Malah district and around the Handarat camp.

Fighting also raged in the city in the Suleiman al Halabi neighbourhood, the front line to the north of Aleppo’s Old City and in the residential Bustan al Basha quarter.

Rebels and rescuers said at least seven missiles were dropped on the hospital, more commonly known as Sakhour, by both Russian jets and Syrian helicopters.

An American relief organisation said two patients were killed and 13 injured in the attack, which was the second on the hospital in less than a week.

“The hospital is now out of service completely. There’s destruction to walls, infrastructure, equipment and generators. There are no more guards or staff left. It’s complete darkness,” said Mohammad Abu Rajab, a radiologist in the hospital.

Footage of the bombed hospital on social media showed extensive damage.

The attack drew immediate condemnation from France and Germany. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the shelling of healthcare structures and personnel in Aleppo amounted to war crimes, adding: “Their perpetrators will be held to account.”

“The bombing of Aleppo needs to finally stop! Whoever wants to fight terrorists does not attack hospitals!” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier tweeted.

The U.S envoy to the United Nations last week called Russia’s actions in Syria “barbarism,” not counter-terrorism.

An official for U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration condemned the bombing, citing “total disregard” for medical professionals and those needing their help.

“Reports of yet another hospital being destroyed further demonstrates the total disregard for the lives of medical professionals and their patients who need critical care because of the Assad regime and Russia’s relentless campaign against the Syrian people.”

Rebels said Moscow and the Syrian army have for months been targeting power plants, hospitals and bakeries to force into surrender the nearly 250,000 believed trapped in the city.

Hundreds of people have been killed in indiscriminate bombing of residential areas and many hundreds more wounded, with little access to treatment in hospitals that lack basic supplies.

The army, aided by hundreds of Iranian-backed militias who have arrived in Aleppo, have backed up the air campaign with a ground offensive on several frontlines.

“The regime is spearheading an attack on all fronts and is trying to open more than one major front and of course there are a lot of amassing of troops mostly based in Handarat,” Abu Haidar, a commander in Fastaqim, one of the rebel groups inside Aleppo, said via internet messaging.

In a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was ready to consider more ways to normalise the situation in Aleppo, the ministry said.

But Lavrov criticised Washington’s failure to separate moderate rebel groups from those the Russians call terrorists, which had allowed forces led by the group formerly known as the Nusra front to violate the U.S.-Russian truce agreed on Sept. 9.

The United States made clear it would not, at least for now, carry through a threat made on Wednesday to halt the diplomacy if Russia did not take immediate steps to end the violence.

Moscow and Assad spurned the ceasefire to launch the new offensive, potentially the biggest and most decisive battle of the civil war, which is now in its sixth year.

BACK AND FORTH

An army source quoted in state media said its forces had made advances, which was denied by rebels.

A news commentary by the state-run Ikhbariyah said “high level coordination from the air and ground by Syrian and Russian warplanes” had allowed the two allies to “successful hit locations where terrorist groups had dug in.”

But rebels said Syrian troops backed by fresh reinforcements from Iranian-backed militias were struggling to make any gains in a ground offensive in a key frontline in the old city.

“They are shelling the old city heavily after another failed attempt to gain ground. They have lost several fighters and we are steadfast,” said Abu Hamam, a rebel from the Failaq al-Sham group.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group that monitors the war, reported heavy bombardment by government forces and “back and forth” fighting in the Suleiman al-Halabi neighbourhood.

Rebels led by the main Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham said on Saturday they had regained several areas in the Bustan al-Pasha district seized a day before, a strategic point that would allow the army to press into the heart of the rebel held eastern sector.

Russia joined the war exactly a year ago, tipping the balance of power in favour of Assad, who is also supported by Iranian ground forces and Shi’ite militia from Lebanon and Iraq.

The army said it would press its advantage after retaking last Thursday the strategic Handarat camp north of Aleppo that had already changed hands once since the start of the attack.

As Ramadan began in Germany on Monday, Syrian asylum seeker Khairallah Swaid said he would pray for a reunion with his wife, who is stranded at a camp in Greece, and crave his mother’s makloubeh, a meat and rice dish served during the fasting month.

The Muslim holy month that began this year on June 6 revolves around daily fasts from sunrise to sunset, and then favourite meals with family and friends during the night hours.

But for many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who came to Europe last year – mainly Muslims escaping war, conflict and poverty in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond – Ramadan this time around will be a much more subdued affair.

In Germany, most are still living in shelters where they have long complained that the food served by caterers contracted by local authorities is “inedible”. Their protest has grown raucous with the approach of the religious festival.

“You can’t have Ramadan without good food,” said 25-year-old Swaid, sitting next to his brother Hamza at Sham (Levant), a popular Syrian snack bar in Neukoelln, a poor district of Berlin with a large migrant population.

Swaid, who lives in a shelter north of the German capital, spends most of the 120 euros ($136) he gets a month on food. He and other asylum seekers chip in for flatbread, rice and vegetables, which they cook using a kettle.

“I miss my wife, but during Ramadan I will miss my mother’s food more,” joked Swaid a few days before Ramadan, eating pieces of flatbread stuffed with chicken shawarma and garlic paste.

Many shelters in Berlin are hosting Ramadan for the first time and some are trying to ensure a pleasant dining experience.

At Tempelhof, a former airport built by Hitler to showcase Nazi power and now home to some 5,000 migrants, a spokeswoman for a company running the shelter said guests would be offered dates and water after fasting, in line with Muslim tradition.

BREAD, SAUSAGE, YOGHURT, CHEESE, JAM

In addition, the sunrise-to-sunset fast lasts longer in northern Europe now than in the Middle East. With the June sun rising earlier and setting later in Europe, it can be two to three hours longer for migrants than for those back home.

As the sun set in a crimson blaze over the Oresund strait dividing Denmark and Sweden, the Muslim residents of Hemmeslovs Herrgard asylum camp waited impatiently in the cafeteria queue.

At 09:30 p.m., half an hour before sunset, the line was already 25 meters (yards) long. The cafeteria was abuzz with children playing and adults chatting with plates and mugs in their hands, ready to chow down at exactly 10:00 p.m..

Magnus Falk, the camp manager, stood with a bag of bread in his hand, trying to calm people down.

“They were dissatisfied with the content of the breakfast snack,” he said. About half of the 300 residents observes Ramadan. They all get a bag of bread with sausage, yogurt, cheese and jam to eat just before dawn breaks at around 03:30 a.m. to bolster themselves for another day of fasting.

Mohammed, a Syrian from a town near Aleppo, has found some abandoned pieces of bread on the ground outside the cafeteria, which he tears up and throws outside the window of his room.

“We like to throw leftover bread out for the birds, so me and my siblings can watch them up close,” he said. In Islam, Muslims should not throw away leftover food, but give it instead to the needy or to animals.

Mohammed, who came with his family of five to Sweden nine months ago and is now waiting for an interview with the Migration Agency, is not impressed with the food in the home. He says migrants try to make it more appetising by adding spices.

“Normally we cook very nice Arabic food during Ramadan and eat with friends, but here we are alone. But we still celebrate Ramadan, because it is a tradition,” he said.

GREEK CAMP CONDITIONS

In Greece, Muslim migrants stranded since countries along the Balkans route closed their borders, say the scorching heat and poor conditions at the state-run camps are making it harder to observe the holy month.

“We can’t stay in the tent because it’s too hot and the children are vomiting or (have) diarrhoea because the place is so dirty,” said Mahdieh, a 14-year-old living at Schisto, a state-run tent camp in a former military base near Athens.

Mahdieh, whose family fled Afghanistan’s Logar province because they were threatened by the Taliban, remembers Ramadan at home as a time when families would get together to talk, laugh and be happy.

“(Here) we have depression, we are tired, we don’t know how we can stay here,” she said.

Abdul Baseer Nomand used to work as a technical consultant for the German army in Afghanistan and arrived in Greece just before the borders shut in February. Now he lives in a tent with his wife and five children and wonders how camp authorities would accommodate their needs.

“Today is the first day. Let’s see what they have for us,” he said. “If the weather is hot, it’s very difficult for everyone because they will be thirsty. The problem is that here the environment is not suitable for proper living,” he said.

Like others forced to flee home, he longed for the time it is safe enough for them to return.

“Everyone is missing his family, his country, and this is very hard,” he said. “(It’s) so difficult for people far away from their country, from their neighbours, from their relatives.”