The flow of the crowd pushed him back downstairs and he fell on top of people, he said. He was trapped on top of them until firefighters rescued him about 30 minutes later.”It wasn’t nothing but two girls fighting,” Mr Blackwell said “Why’d they have to spray Mace?”. At least 20 people have been killed by blizzards that have shut down much of America’s north-east – bringing down power lines, causing mudslides and reducing air, train and road travel to chaos. Authorities said the storms were the region’s worst for seven years and had left a quarter of a million homes and businesses without power.Airports across the north-east were closed, leaving thousands of people stranded Airlines were unable to say when flights would recommence. Many train routes and bus services were cancelled.With yesterday being President’s Day – a national holiday – there were far fewer commuters than normal, but police from Kentucky to Massachusetts issued a plea to motorists to just stay home none the less.The western tip of Maryland was buried, with 49 inches of snow in Garrett County on top of 30ft drifts left by earlier storms.

“It’s no man’s land out there,” the Garrett County state highway supervisor Paul McIntyre said. “It looks more like Siberia than Maryland.”Elsewhere, 27 inches fell in West Virginia’s Berkeley County while the Seven Springs ski resort area in western Pennsylvania had 40 inches. In northern Virginia, Winchester had 30 inches and Linden, in the Blue Ridge mountains, had 35 inches. Parts of Ohio reported ice 8 inches thick.By yesterday afternoon more than 18 inches of snow had fallen in New York’s Central Park – breaking by six inches the record set in 1902. New York’s Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, estimated that the storm had already already cost the city about $20m (£12.5m).Washington suffered its worst snowstorms in a century. Sixteen inches fell, bringing much of the city to a standstill with only a very limited service operating on metro trains and many roads impassable.The snow had its most lethal effect in the states to the west.

Weather-related deaths were reported in Illinois, Nebraska, West Virginia, Missouri, Ohio, New Jersey and Iowa.. Israeli soldiers ambushed and killed a senior Hamas militant in the Gaza Strip yesterday, as it emerged that six Hamas members killed over the weekend were adapting a model aircraft to carry explosives for attacks on Israelis. He died of his injuries after being taken to an Israeli hospital in an army helicopter. Palestinian witnesses described Israeli soldiers running between cars on the busy coast road, the only route between Gaza City and the southern Gaza Strip open to Palestinians.

When they came level with the black Honda in which Mr Abu Zeid was travelling, they opened fire. Another witness described seeing shots fired at the black Honda from a blue van full of vegetables parked at the side of the road.The Israeli army said it had not intended to assassinate Mr Abu Zeid but to capture him, and that its soldiers only shot at him after he opened fire. The Israeli army has an openly stated policy of assassinating Palestinian militants.In a statement, the army said that Mr Abu Zeid was a close associate of Salah Shehadeh, a Hamas leader who was assassinated last July in an Israeli air strike that also killed nine Palestinian children It also said he had taken over Shehadeh’s role in the group. Shehadeh was one of the most senior links between Hamas’ political and armed wings.The killing came amid reports that the Israeli army is preparing for an offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, after Hamas militants killed four soldiers in a bomb attack on an Israeli tank on Saturday. According to the Israeli media yesterday, the army has ruled out reoccupying the Gaza Strip, as it did with Palestinian cities in the West Bank, but is instead planning more assasinations and attacks on Hamas’ members.