‘Trio of misfortune’: Venezuela blames Pompeo, Bolton & Rubio as fresh blackout hits country

Another crippling blackout that hit Venezuela this week was orchestrated from the outside, Vice President Delcy Rodrigues suggested, singling out the masterminds of the “attack.”

Power went out in most of Caracas and nearly a dozen states in the afternoon on Monday, hitting local businesses and public places. The outage has also affected Venezuela’s main airport and Caracas’ metro system, spreading across 20 states of the country.

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Venezuela’s minister says major power outage likely caused by ‘cyberattack’, points finger at US

Shortly after electricity was restored, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez made a televised statement, claiming that the “fascist right” and their “imperial masters” in the US had attacked key transmission lines, thus plunging the country into darkness.

Rodriguez, who offered no evidence in support of his claims, pinned blame on “the trio of misfortune, perversity and criminality” – namely US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Republican Senator Marco Rubio

“What was the objective of this new attack? It was to deprive Venezuela’s people of electricity as happened so terribly just two weeks ago,” the top official stated, saying the outage was dealt with in “record time” in most parts of the country.

All three politicians had made a number of incendiary remarks in favor of regime change in Venezuela. Pompeo recently said the “constraint” on any action against President Nicolas Maduro was lifted when all US diplomats left the country. Rubio is one of the most vocal backers of lending all kinds of support to the opposition in Caracas.

For his part, Bolton, a messiah of American expansionism and a Bush-era hawk, has inadvertently vowed military action against Venezuela. Lately, he made it clear that his boss Donald Trump was “very serious” about “all options” to remove Maduro from power.

Another Vice President and Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez said the country’s lines transmitting power to the west of Venezuela were “attacked using EMP equipment.”

Because of the blackout, shop owners pulled down shutters on darkened stores while employees flooded the streets trying to get home before sunset.

People in Caracas try to board a bus outside a closed metro station © REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

It comes less than three weeks after almost all of the country was left without electricity in what was considered the worst power failure in decades. The Venezuelan government maintained that a “cyberattack” led to the disruption of services.

Passengers are waiting during the blackout at Simon Bolivar international airport in Caracas © REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Venezuela’s beleaguered President Nicolas Maduro blamed that blackout on foreign-sponsored “saboteurs and terrorists.” Meanwhile, Juan Guaido, the self-proclaimed interim president of Venezuela, accused Maduro of letting the country’s infrastructure crumble to breaking point.

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