The uprise of temperature began very slowly in Slovenia on Thursday, by which local people eagerly expect to conclude the nightmare of a week-long snow, sleet and icy storm.

Unfortunately, the reality left by ice storm problems is by no means changed overnight.

Trains between Ljubljana and the port of Koper have been brought to a standstill due to an ice winter storm that began last weekend.

It will take months to completely resume the passenger train service between the two cities, Dusan Mes, chief of the Slovenia Railways company, said on Wednesday night.

Koper, some 106 km southwest of Ljubljana, is the only commercial port in Slovenia. It is also one of the most important transit routes for goods heading from Asia to central Europe.

The Ljubljana-Koper railway, a lifeline for the port of Koper and for Slovenia's railway transport, has been battered hard in the ice storm, Mes said.

"We are now trying to remove all fallen trees, power poles and cables so as to ensure transport into and from the port of Koper by means of diesel engines," the railway operator's boss said.

At least 63 train compositions are stranded on tracks while some 2,700 cargo carriages in the port were reportedly waiting to be transported.

"We are hoping to be able to fix the railway line on Thursday to an extant that cargo transport can resume with diesel engines," Mes said.

However, he added that passenger train service will not return normal until four or five months later when electrification is set up again in the most damaged section.

An ice storm following days of heavy snow and sleet, the worst ever disaster in Slovenia in recent years, have left one fourth households without electricity while up to 80 percent of the trees in the country are damaged in the natural disaster.

The nationwide power failure occurred when many power lines were crushed either by the weight of ice and snow, or have been toppled by falling trees.

Around 500 tonnes of steel debris, cables and power lines are lying scattered around the country, according to Slovenian Defense Minister Roman Jakic.

Meanwhile, hospitals in the capital of Ljubljana and Maribor, the second largest city in Slovenia, are bracing for a huge surge of emergency cases.

Hundreds of patients with injuries have received emergency care at the two main hospitals in Ljubljana and Maribor alone since Saturday. The worst of it was that a 20-year-old electrician was killed while trying to repair a broken power line near Maribor on Wednesday.

The extreme weather and hard roads also forced the majority of schools and kindergartens across the country into closure or class cancellations.

More than 10,000 power maintenance workers, firefighters, civil rescue teams, and military personnel have been at work around the clock fixing broken power lines, cleaning up blocked roads and providing emergency relief.

Prime Minister Alenka Bratusek announced on Sunday that Slovenia will apply for the EU disaster relief aid, including power generators. In response, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic are sending power generators to the severely affected area in Slovenia.

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