According to sources, a group of 50 Maoists raided the power house located near the earthen dyke of the left flank of Donkarayi dam at the inlet of the power canal. They asked the AP Genco employees posted at the power house to leave the place and later blasted the main control room with explosives, thereby plunging parts of Visakhapatnam port city into darkness.

The power house, commissioned in 1983, has an installed capacity of 25 megawatts and generates half a million units of power every day. The damage to the power station due to the Maoist blast is being assessed.

The attack on the power house comes barely 24 hours after Maoists shot dead Visakhapatnam Zilla parishad vice-chairman T Ravi Shankar of the Congress during a jatra at his native Hukumpeta village in the tribal belt of Visakhapatnam district on Monday night. A group of 30 Maoists from Pedabayulu dalam (armed squad) had entered the village raising slogans and went to his house and shot him at point blank range.

The twin attacks came at the end of the "protest week" organized by Maoists against the proposed bauxite mining project. The police had sounded a red alert in all the agency (tribal) areas and deployed teams to track down the Maoists who had threatened to launch three-pronged attacks on politicians, police personnel and public property.