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A woman looks at her mobile phone on a street in Havana, Cuba, during a power outage on July 6 (local time). / Courtesy of AFP, Yonhap News

Cuba was hit by another massive nationwide blackout on July 6 (local time) as its entire power grid collapsed, plunging the Caribbean island into darkness, the Washington Post (WP) reported.

Union Electrica, the state electricity company, announced through X (formerly Twitter) that a total disconnection occurred across the National Electric System, adding that technical teams are currently investigating the specific cause of the failure. The Ministry of Energy and Mines stated that emergency procedures to restore power have been activated.

This incident marks Cuba's third nationwide blackout this year, following a widespread outage in mid-March and another large-scale power failure that struck the eastern provinces in mid-May.

The blackout has paralyzed daily life across the country, effectively halting public transportation and forcing medical authorities to cancel tens of thousands of surgeries, according to the WP.

"Small-scale localized power systems are being brought online across the country," said Cuban Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levi. "Essential services continue to be protected despite the complex circumstances aggravated by the energy blockade we face."

Cuba's acute power crisis escalated after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened in January to impose tariffs on any nation that sells or provides oil to the island.

Currently, Cuba produces only 40% of the fuel it needs to meet domestic demand. A shipment of 730,000 barrels of crude oil delivered by Russia in late March was already entirely depleted by the end of April.

As a result, the Cuban government has been rationing electricity through planned rolling blackouts that can stretch for more than 24 consecutive hours, leaving residents struggling to prepare meals and secure basic daily necessities.

"I need to cook dinner, but I'm worried about when the electricity will come back," said Lina May, a 36-year-old local resident. "I told my father that we might end up starving, so we need to go buy charcoal."

Another resident, Richard Valdes, 40, lamented the situation, saying, "Once again, there is no electricity. Now we have no water, no gas—nothing. We have absolutely nothing until power is restored."

                                                                                                            Park Jin-sook