Massive power outage in Pakistan

Several cities and towns in Pakistan plunged into darkness after a huge blackout, according to media reports.

The outage was reported shortly before midnight on Sunday almost simultaneously in many cities, the Dawn reported.

Residents of Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Islamabad, Multan, and others faced the blackout, the reports stated.

Islamabad Deputy Commissioner Hamza Shafqaat tweeted that the National Transmission Despatch Company's (NTDC) lines have tripped, causing an outage.''It will take sometime before everything gets back to normal,'' he added.

The NTDC teams are working to ascertain reasons behind the sudden fall in frequency of the national distribution system, the Express Tribune quoted a Power Division spokesperson as saying. Power Minister Omar Ayub tweeted the ''frequency in the power distribution system suddenly dropped from 50 to 0 which caused the blackout''.

''We are trying to ascertain what caused the drop in frequency, Ayub said, appealing to people to maintain restraint. PTIHMB