Cuba was plunged into darkness on Wednesday as its national power grid collapsed for the fifth time in less than a year, leaving around 10 million people without electricity.
Cuba faced a total grid failure on Wednesday morning, its fifth nationwide blackout in under a year, authorities confirmed. The Ministry of Energy and the National Electric Union said the outage began at 9:14 a.m. local time and restoration efforts were underway.
The collapse underscores the fragility of Cuba’s antiquated oil-fired power plants, which have long struggled to meet demand. The crisis has been compounded by dwindling fuel imports from allies Venezuela, Russia and Mexico, as well as tightening US sanctions that have left the island with limited resources to buy fuel or repair its aging infrastructure.
Residents, already enduring daily outages lasting up to 16 hours, voiced their frustration. “Back home in the countryside, we will have to cook with charcoal, with firewood. It’s stressful and also frustrating,” said visitor Raúl Ernesto Gutiérrez in Havana.
Havana state worker Danai Hernández said workplaces were forced to shut down as power vanished: “I’m going home to organize everything … now we have to wait. We don’t have any other choice.”
The outages have sparked rare anti-government protests in recent years, highlighting rising public anger over Cuba’s worsening economic crisis, which has also triggered shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
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Cuba has called for the United Nations to stop the United States from starting a war in the region, amid rising tensions due to a military build-up in the Caribbean to counter drug cartels.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked or restricted visas on Wednesday, for certain officials from Africa, the Caribbean, and Brazil tied to Cuba’s overseas medical worker programme, citing concerns over forced labour and financial exploitation.
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Power is gradually being restored in parts of Havana after a nationwide blackout left millions without electricity. The outage, caused by a grid collapse on Friday evening, affected around 10 million people, with some areas seeing progress while large portions of Cuba remain in the dark.
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