Rebel Attack On Electric Power Line Plunge Pakistan Into Darkness

About 80% of the country's population lost electricity in the early hours of Sunday and disruption was reported at Lahore's international airport, but flights were not affected.
The power failure, one of the worst Pakistan has experienced, caused electricity to be cut in major cities, including the capital Islamabad. 

The outage started after midnight when a transmission line connected to the national grid was damaged in an explosion, officials said.

Authorities blamed the attack on a separatist group in the Baluchistan province in the country's southwest. 

By mid-morning on Sunday, officials said power had been restored to roughly half the country.

"The fault in the system was caused by a main transmission line being blown up in Baluchistan," water and power minister Abid Sher Ali said. 

Mr Ali apologised for the power failure and blamed rebels in Baluchistan's Naseerabad district.

A spokesman added: "The blowing up of two power pylons in Naseerabad... created a backward surge which affected the system. It was an act of sabotage." 

Pakistan's largest but least developed and most sparsely populated province of Baluchistan has been wracked for decades by a separatist insurgency that was revived in 2004.

Rebels have attacked the electricity grid in Baluchistan three times in the last two weeks, according to Muhammad Younus Dagha, an official at Pakistan's water and power ministry. 

Pakistan is currently facing an energy crisis which led Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to cancel his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week to deal with a petrol shortage.

Many people struggle to meet the low costs for electricity, leaving utility companies without the cash needed to upgrade infrastructure.

One of Mr Sharif's key campaign pledges leading up to the 2013 election was solving the country's energy crisis. The ongoing crisis is continuing to heap pressure on his government.