This comes two weeks after a blackout struck the Iberian peninsula.

French authorities on Sunday blamed sabotage and ordered heightened security after a fire at an electricity sub-station in Nice caused the second major power blackout in two days along the Riviera.

The latest fire cut power to about 45,000 homes in western Nice for several hours, authorities said. Nice airport was briefly without electricity, the city’s deputy mayor Gael Nofri told AFP.

A similar arson attack on a power substation on Saturday partially disrupted the final day of the Cannes Film Festival, forcing organisers to use backup generators to keep the event going.

The two anonymous anarchist groups claimed responsibility citing environmental pollution and opposition to weapons deliveries to Ukraine and Middle Eastern countries as reasons for the attack.

In an anonymous statement to BFM-TV, the anarchists claimed: We disrupted the primary electrical substation powering the Cannes region and severed the 225 kV line from Nice.

They asserted that the intentional blackout was meant to paralyze critical infrastructure, including research facilities, start-ups, an aerospace plant, the local airport, and military and technological centers.

As a result of the sabotage, two prosecutors have opened an investigation and security has been heightened, but what is troubling is that more blackouts may take place down the line.