LONDON: A gas pipeline explosion on Wednesday at the Tishreen Thermal Power Plant in the Damascus countryside forced three major Syrian power plants out of service, authorities said. The blast in the Harran Al-Awamid area, near Damascus International Airport, cut gas supplies needed to operate the Deir Ali, Nasiriyah and Tishreen power plants, the Syrian Electricity Co. said in a statement carried by Syrian state media. The resulting loss of generating capacity is expected to increase the duration of scheduled power cuts, it said. A fire sparked by the explosion was still burning when the company issued its statement. Specialized emergency teams were responding to the blaze and assessing the damage, but officials gave no estimate for when the plants might resume operations. The company did not say how many additional hours of outages were expected, which areas would be affected or how long the disruption could last. It said it would provide updates on the status of the power plants and electricity supplies. The cause of the explosion was not immediately known.