ROME, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Power was mostly restored late Sunday after a massive power outage in the early morning hours left most of Italy in darkness.
The Italian national grid authority at first blamed the blackout on a malfunction of two major supply lines from France -- which France denied. Later the focus switched to Switzerland as the culprit.
Only the island of Sardinia escaped the power cut, the BBC reported.
French officials confirmed there had been a brief interruption of supply due to stormy conditions but denied this was the cause of the Italian blackout.
About 110 electric trains came to a standstill across Italy, trapping thousands of people.
The outage was the latest in a series of major blackouts to affect national power grids. Northeast United States and Canada were hit last month, and Denmark and southern Sweden on Tuesday. A power cut left London's underground transport in chaos last month.
