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(Bloomberg) — Lebanon is struggling with a “total blackout” across the country after the state-run power firm said it has ran out of gas oil amid intensifying cross-border assaults between Hezbollah and Israel.
Electricite Du Liban said that the last remaining production unit of the Zahrani power plant has been “forcibly shut down” and that the blackout will affect the country’s airport, ports, water pumps, sewage systems and prisons, state-run National News Agency reported Saturday.
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The blackout comes shortly after Hezbollah — designated a terrorist organization by the US — fired a salvo of rockets at Israel in response to a strike that killed 10 Syrian nationals and wounded five others in South Lebanon. Tens of thousands of Israelis and Lebanese have evacuated their homes to escape the cross-border fighting, which erupted around the time Hamas invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and triggering the war in Gaza.
Lebanon has been reeling since late 2019 from its worst financial meltdown in decades. The government has defaulted on its international debt and has failed to take the measures required to clinch foreign support.
The cash-strapped Mediterranean country has been suffering from severe power rationing for decades as political bickering stalled plans to overhaul the electricity sector, but outages have worsened during the current financial crisis. Lebanese households and institutions already rely on subscriptions to private backup generators as mismanagement and corruption mean EDL has for years failed to provide 24-hour electricity.
With foreign reserves at Banque du Liban dwindling, the central bank has halted transfers to cover fuel imports, according to Energy Minister Walid Fayyad.
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