HAVANA – A blackout hit Havana and the rest of the western half of Cuba on Wednesday, leaving millions of people without power on an island struggling with chronic outages blamed on a crumbling electric grid.

Lázaro Guerra, general director of the Ministry of Energy and Mines, said the massive outage was caused by a failure on a transmission line that connects two major plants. He said power would be restored gradually.

The outage followed two days of peak-hour power shortages across the island.

A total blackout hit Cuba in September , with officials blaming aging infrastructure and fuel shortages at power plants. The ongoing outages also affect water service and impact the island’s fragile business sector.

Cuba is going through a severe economic crisis that deepened during the cor

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