Power starts to return to Syria after nationwide blackout

Government officials say outages could last until midnight in some parts of the war-torn country

By AFP and ToI Staff 3 March 2016, 9:34 pm

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Syrian men shop at a vegetables market in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on February 26, 2016, just hours before a midnight deadline for a landmark ceasefire in the country's five-year civil war. (AFP/KARAM AL-MASRI)

Power was said to be returning across Syria Thursday evening, hours after the war-torn country suffered a nationwide blackout, in a potent reminder of the toll the conflict has taken on the country’s infrastructure.

Syrian state television said electricity was slowly coming back online in parts of the country after the widespread blackout began early Thursday afternoon.

Citing a source within the electricity ministry, the TV station said the outage could last until midnight in some areas. The communications ministry said that internet services, which were also down in some part of the country, have been resumed.

No cause was cited.

“Electricity has been cut across all provinces and teams are trying to determine the reason for this unexpected cut,” the station reported, citing a source within the electricity ministry.

Damascus residents said power in the capital went out in the early afternoon and that mobile Internet connections from some private providers were also not working. Syria’s state mobile provider said its internet service had been “partially cut due to part of the network unexpectedly malfunctioning.”

Since Syria’s conflict erupted in March 2011, various areas across the country have experienced intermittent power outages as a result of clashes or airstrikes and many regularly rely on generators for power.

Syria’s parliament had on Monday called in electricity minister Imad Khamis for a special hearing on the power sector.

Khamis told parliamentarians that the cost of “direct damage” to the country’s power stations and the electricity network from 2011 until the end of 2015 was estimated $3.75 billion.

In statements carried by Syria’s state news agency SANA, Khamis said five out of the 13 main power stations in Syria had been “directly damaged” in the war.

More than 270,000 people — among them more than 79,000 civilians — have died in Syria since its conflict erupted in March 2011.

On Saturday, a ceasefire deal brokered by the United States and Russia came into effect in areas of Syria where the Islamic State jihadist group and Al-Qaeda’s affiliate Al-Nusra Front are not deployed.