Power was out across Iraq on Monday as scorching summer temperatures pushed electricity grid demand to unprecedented levels, authorities said.

The outage came amid a heatwave that Iraqi meteorological services expect to last more than a week, with temperatures climbing as high as 50C in parts of the country.

Mitigating the grid interruption was the fact that most households rely on private generators, acquired to compensate for daily power cuts to public electricity.

The electricity ministry said the grid suffered a “total outage” after two transmission lines were shut down “due to a record rise in temperatures, increased consumer demand, and increased electrical load in the provinces of Babylon and Karbala, which are experiencing an influx of millions of pilgrims” for a major Shiite Mu

See Full Page