Mass blackout hits almost half of Venezuela

A large-scale power outage affected at least 14 of Venezuela's 23 states including Caracas on Tuesday.

The outage, which began at 12:45 p.m., affected the states of Vargas, Miranda, Zulia, Falcon, Trujillo, Aragua, Lara, Barinas, Carabobo, Táchira, Amazonas, Anzoategui, Bolivar, Cojedes, Yaracuy, Portuguesa, Monagas and Apure and several sectors in Caracas, which is normally not affected by the country's constant blackouts.

Deputy Energy Minister Franco Silva attributed the outage to failures on several transmission lines in the states Guarico and Aragua.

By 1 p.m. power had been restored in some of the affected localities. Silva said that it would "take some time, maybe hours" until the service was fully recovered.