Unknown assailants set fire to three electric transformers in the towns of Samallout and Mallawi in the Upper Egypt governorate of Minya, Al-Ahram’s Arabic news website reported.
Eyewitness reports said the attackers threw Molotov cocktails at the transformers but failed to cause any significant damage. Police suspect members of Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to be the culprits.
Power cuts have become increasingly frequent in Egypt during the summer months, reaching their highest levels in 2014. While the government says the crisis is a structural one, mainly due to the lack of fuel and the inadequacy of current power-generating capacities coping with increasing consumption, attacks on power infrastructure were also cited as a cause.
Last week the interior ministry claimed six terrorist cells linked to the Muslim Brotherhood have been identified to as carrying out the attacks. The Brotherhood has repeatedly denied links to violence since it came under a government crackdown following the popularly-backed ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi by the army in 2013.