Power back in Kyrgyzstan after Central Asia blackout

Power was gradually being restored across three ex-Soviet countries Central Asian countries Tuesday after one of the biggest blackouts in the grid-sharing region’s history. 

Electricity was restored across Kyrgyzstan after an accident triggered a massive power outage there and in Central Asian neighbours Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the ex-Soviet country’s energy ministry said.

“Electricity supplies have been restored all over Kyrgyzstan after a large-scale power failure,” a ministry spokeswoman, Jiyde Zootbekova, told AFP.

Uzbekistan’s energy ministry said that “the supply of electricity to the regions of the country is now gradually being restored.”

An AFP correspondent said that electricity had returned to his apartment in central Tashkent at around 1630 local time (1130 GMT).

AFP correspondents in Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty said electricity had returned to the economic hub, although it was not immediately clear if other cities in the vast country’s southern regions had received power again. 

Kazakhstan’s capital Nur-Sultan, part of a different grid, was not affected by the outage.