Cuba and Panama suffer nationwide. Blackout #scruftuff.com #scruftuff #cuba # Panama.

Cuba suffered a general blackout on Friday caused by a crash of its national electricity grid, officials said, the latest major power outage in the island country.

"At around 8:15 pm tonight, a breakdown... caused the significant loss of power in western Cuba and with it the fall of the national electricity system," the Ministry of Energy and Mines said.

Angelica Caridad Martinez, a resident of the central city of Camaguey, told AFP the outage landed like a shock, plunging her community into darkness.