Major Venezuelan cities hit by new blackout

Caracas: A new blackout hit Caracas and other major Venezuelan cities on Friday, the third major electricity outage in the crisis-plagued country this month. The blackout began around 7:10 pm (2310 GMT), leaving the capital as well as cities including Maracaibo, Valencia, Maracay and San Cristobal without electricity, according to users on social media networks. It is the third time since March 7 that a major power outage has hit Venezuela — worsening the already-dire economic and living conditions in a country that is witnessing a major political showdown between President Nicolas Maduro and opposition chief Juan Guaido.

Maduro has blamed the previous outages on sabotage, but experts have said that infrastructure crumbling from years of neglect is a more likely culprit than outside interference. Earlier on Friday, the Red Cross said it would begin impartially distributing aid in Venezuela in two weeks, brushing aside the threat of political interference amid the Maduro-Guaido power struggle. Malnutrition and disease are on the rise as living conditions plummet in the oil-producing Latin American nation, which is spiralling ever deeper into economic chaos during a protracted political crisis. — AFP