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Venezuela: Maduro blames blackout on sniper and tells people to pray
Source: The Guardian
Venezuela: Maduro blames blackout on sniper and tells people to pray
Venezuelan leader claimed in a broadcast the latest outage was caused by mercenaries ‘sent by the coup-mongering right’
Tom Phillips in Caracas and Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá
Thu 28 Mar 2019 15.08 GMT
Nicolás Maduro has asked Venezuelans to pray for the country’s recovery from another crippling nationwide blackout, in a crackly and foreboding telephone interview that reinforced the mounting sense of crisis.
In a late-night broadcast, Maduro claimed the latest powercut had been caused by a sniper attack on a key part of Venezuela’s energy infrastructure carried out by mercenaries “sent by the coup-mongering right”.
“They knew what they were attacking … Only the North American empire has enough hatred, enough wickedness in its brain, enough perversity – has a diabolical enough mind – to order an attack like this,” Maduro said, claiming the supposed long-range rifle attack had caused a devastating fire.
“This is a total war,” Venezuela’s authoritarian leader added. “Since they can’t invade the country … they have decided to damage, damage, damage.”
Experts believe the crippling power failures – which have continued to blight Venezuela this week after a historic six-day outage early this month – are a consequence of years of underinvestment and corruption.
-snip-
Venezuelan leader claimed in a broadcast the latest outage was caused by mercenaries ‘sent by the coup-mongering right’
Tom Phillips in Caracas and Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá
Thu 28 Mar 2019 15.08 GMT
Nicolás Maduro has asked Venezuelans to pray for the country’s recovery from another crippling nationwide blackout, in a crackly and foreboding telephone interview that reinforced the mounting sense of crisis.
In a late-night broadcast, Maduro claimed the latest powercut had been caused by a sniper attack on a key part of Venezuela’s energy infrastructure carried out by mercenaries “sent by the coup-mongering right”.
“They knew what they were attacking … Only the North American empire has enough hatred, enough wickedness in its brain, enough perversity – has a diabolical enough mind – to order an attack like this,” Maduro said, claiming the supposed long-range rifle attack had caused a devastating fire.
“This is a total war,” Venezuela’s authoritarian leader added. “Since they can’t invade the country … they have decided to damage, damage, damage.”
Experts believe the crippling power failures – which have continued to blight Venezuela this week after a historic six-day outage early this month – are a consequence of years of underinvestment and corruption.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/28/venezuela-blackout-latest-news-maduro-sniper-prayers