Venezuela struggles with blackout as government claims sabotage

Venezuela's government struggled to cope Friday with a massive electricity blackout that paralyzed much of the country as President Nicolas Maduro blamed the chaos on US sabotage.

Even by the standards of crisis-weary Venezuelans, the blackout -- which began late Thursday -- was one of the longest and most widespread in memory, heightening tensions in Maduro's power struggle with his US-backed rival, opposition leader Juan Guaido.

Maduro made the decision to shut down offices and schools "in order to facilitate efforts for the recovery of electricity service in the country," Vice President Delcy Rodriguez tweeted.

Power supply was gradually being restored to large areas of Caracas on Friday afternoon, as the country slowly began to emerge from the 24-hour blackout.

Electricity supply was also being resumed in areas of Miranda state and Vargas, which contains the country's international airport and main port. Other areas like the western states of Zulia, Tachira and Barinas -- where lengthy outages are common -- were still without power.

Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, patrolling the west of the capital Caracas in an open-topped military jeep, said "everything is calm throughout national territory" as electricity workers tried to restore the electricity.

The outage had left most of the country in chaos, crippling day-to-day functioning of hospitals and other public services, according to local press reports.

Witnesses described scenes of chaos at several hospitals as people tried to move sick relatives in the dark to clinics with better emergency power facilities.

Marielsi Aray, a patient at the University Hospital in Caracas, died after her respirator stopped working.

"The doctors tried to help her by pumping manually, they did everything they could, but with no electricity, what where they to do?" asked Jose Lugo, her distraught uncle.

Generators at the JM de Rios children's hospital in downtown Caracas failed to kick-in when the blackout hit, said Gilbert Altuvez, whose eight-year old boy is among the patients.

"The night was terrible. Without light. Total madness," he said. Emilse Arellano said urgent dialysis for her child had to be cancelled Friday, after a night where staff worked in the light of cellphones.

"The children were very scared."