Bangladesh: a giant power outage affects most of the country

A street plunged into darkness after a giant power cut in Dhaka, Bangladesh, October 4, 2022. © AP - Mahmud Hossain Opu

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1 min

In Bangladesh, a huge power outage affected half the country for much of the day on Tuesday.

The current is far from being completely restored in this country of more than 160 million inhabitants.

The authorities speak of a simple technical problem, but the population is suffering. 

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With our correspondent in the region

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The blackout began at 2 p.m. and affected all of eastern

as well as Dhaka, its capital of more than 22 million people.

In the best-equipped buildings, the generators took over, but these also ended up stopping after several hours, for lack of fuel.

In the second city of the country, Chittagong, public hospitals found themselves without power from the middle of the afternoon: the electric respirators then stopped, the water ran out because the pumps stopped, and the air became suffocating for lack of fans.  

It comes as the country's Hindu minority celebrate Durga, their biggest festival of the year, tonight.

At 8 p.m., 6 hours after the start of the outage, power would have returned to a quarter of the affected areas, according to the electricity company, but the center of the capital was still in the dark.

The authorities claim that it is a simple technical problem of the national network, without wanting to develop further.

A month ago, the west of the country had suffered cuts ranging from forty to ninety minutes. 

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• Bangladeshi

• Energies