Power outages reported in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan

MOSCOW (AP) — Widespread power outages have been reported on Tuesday in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The Interfax news agency said that a significant number of the 2 million residents of Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, found themselves without electricity on Tuesday. Kazakh news site Orda.kz reported that outages also occurred in the south of the country. Massive power outages hit Kyrgyzstan as well. Because of the loss of power in Uzbekistan, the subway in the capital Tashkent stopped working. It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the outages. Uzbek officials blamed a power line failure in Kazakhstan, but offered no details. The three former Soviet nations are part of one power system that was designed in the Soviet times.