LONDON, Jan. 9 (Reuters) - Eurostar will run a restricted service for the next three days due to the severe weather conditions hitting Britain, it said, in the second time in three weeks the service has been disrupted.

The announcement came after a passenger train broke down in the Channel Tunnel on Thursday in a separate incident.

The announcement means the service linking England and France will suffer delays once again, after freezing conditions caused mayhem for thousands in the run up to Christmas.

The latest disruption started with the breakdown of a Brussels-London service which needed to be towed out of the tunnel and its 200 passengers transferred to a waiting train to complete their journey, Eurostar said.

A spokesman for SNCF, the French state railway firm that partly owns Eurostar, said the likely cause lay with the train's on-board signalling system rather than bad weather.

Eurotunnel, the Channel Tunnel operator, said the train had been stuck for at least an hour after experiencing ''traction problems.'' It said it had dispatched a rescue unit to assist and help pull the train out.

Eurostar then said it would only run a restricted service up to and including Sunday Jan. 10, due to the severe weather conditions. It urged those who did not need to travel to cancel or postpone their trip.

''We are running a restricted service on Friday, January 8 with a number of cancellations, including our very early morning and late evening services,'' the group said in a statement.

''Disney and Ski services are running normally. Also, there may be additional delays or last minute cancellations. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.''

Last month's failure, which brought a string of cancellations and chaotic scenes at railway stations, was blamed on powdery snow that melted into the trains.

On that occasion Eurostar, owned by the French and Belgian state railways firms and by Britain, suspended all services for three days to find out what went wrong and to ensure trains ran safely.

December's stoppages stranded tens of thousands of passengers before the hectic Christmas period, ignited a major row over who was to blame for the chaos and even drew strong criticism from French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

An independent review ordered into the service disruption in December is due to report its findings by the end of January.

Eurostar has said the trains suffered electrical failure last month caused by condensation when moving from cold air in northern France into the warmer tunnel.