CARACAS (Dispatches) -- A massive blackout has swept across the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and more than a dozen states, the latest in a spate of similar incidents that the government has blamed on saboteurs from the U.S. in the past.
Authorities said some areas of Caracas and 15 of the country’s 23 states had suffered blackouts due to an attack on the electrical system.
“There has been a new attack on the national electricity system, specifically in El Guri,” which is the site of a dam generating much of Venezuela’s electricity, Minister of Electrical Energy Nestor Reverol said in a statement on state TV.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez censured the attack and assured followers on Twitter that workers were doing all they could to restore service.
“Venezuela denounces a new attack on the National Electric System. The workers are working hard to restore this vital service to our people. Nothing will get us out of our way of peace and quiet. Together with [President] Nicolas Maduro, the people will win!” Rodriguez tweeted.
Venezuela suffered three national blackouts in 2019, some lasting as long as three days, with authorities attributing the attacks on the system and the damaging of power lines to saboteurs and opponents of the Maduro government.
Maduro has previously accused the opposition movement, led by self-proclaimed president Juan Guaido, of devising a plan “to accompany the blackout with general violence”.
The blackouts in the past have led to widespread looting in parts of the country and briefly paralyzed oil exports.
The Venezuelan opposition and Maduro’s critics, however, accuse the government of failing to maintain the country’s infrastructure.
Maduro has accused Washington of masterminding a “coup” against his government and blamed the U.S. for his country’s economic crisis.
The alleged sabotage comes in the wake of the opposition’s humiliating
defeat in Venezuela’s local and regional elections last month.
Maduro’s ruling socialist party claimed a landslide victory in the country’s first vote to include top opposition parties in nearly four years, bagging 20 of the 23 gubernatorial offices and the mayorship of the capital Caracas.
The opposition parties, ending their three-year boycott of regional elections, walked away with the only remaining three posts.
The vote marked the EU sending a team of 1,000 observers to monitor Venezuela’s elections for the first time in 15 years.
Even so, they claimed irregularities, which prompted Maduro to describe them as spies and dismiss an EU request to extend their stay in the country.