Pakistan blackout: National power grid breakdown plunges country into darkness

Islamabad - Efforts were underway to determine the reasons behind the situation.

A breakdown in Pakistan’s national power grid plunged the country into darkness on Saturday night, officials said.

Major cities of Pakistan faced a total blackout following a massive power outage caused by fault in main transmission lines.

Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, Rawalpindi and other cities plunged into the darkness due to the electricity failure. The electricity breakdown also hit Azad Kashmir while mobile and internet services were also affected at the time of filing this report.

As the outage hit the cities, Federal Information Minister Shibli Faraz said that there is a technical "fault in NTDC system. System is being restored".

Sources said a 500kv transmission line was tripped while Jhelum, Tarbela and Mangla power plants are also shut at the same time.

“A countrywide blackout has been caused by a sudden plunge in the frequency in the power transmission system,” Pakistan’s Power Minister Omar Ayub Khan said on Twitter.

He said efforts were underway to determine the reasons behind the situation, and asked people across the country to remain calm.

Explaining reason behind the massive failure of electricity, he said that frequency of power distribution all of a sudden dropped to 0 from 50.

“We are investigating the reason,” he added.