Updated

Yemen's government says attacks on power lines are behind a widespread outage that has left several provinces and the country's capital without electricity.

Yemen is the Arab world's most impoverished nation and experiences frequent electricity cuts throughout the summer.

A statement by the electricity ministry on Tuesday blamed the latest outage on attacks on power lines in the eastern Marib province.

The country's capital, Sanaa, has been without power for the past two days, with streets plunged into darkness at night. Only those with generators have had electricity.

A natural gas and petroleum shortage has also made fueling generators difficult and expensive.

Some officials have said they suspect tribesmen allied with former longtime president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, of being behind the attacks in an attempt to undermine the new government.