The article below was published in the daily newspaper La Presse de Tunisie, Tunisia, on August 10, 1978.
Intrigued, somewhat frightened, the population of Sfax wonders: has the sky of Tunisia become a testing ground, even a field of predilection for UFOs?
Within four weeks, two unidentified flying objects were sighted. A disturbing coincidence, it happened each time on a Monday, at the same time, that is to say around 10:00 p.m.
Monday August 7... Sfax in full effervescence, went about its nocturnal Ramadan pleasures. And the light disappeared. Plunging the city into total darkness... A general blackout was to last some 10 minutes. But already the sky had lit up, illuminated by an intense light. Between bright red and orange, an object whose ill-determined shape, varying between circular and oval, crisscrossed space in a flight excluding any confusion with a known artificial or natural phenomenon...
Followed by a tail of smoke and sparks and wrapped itself in a sort of veil of gauze, the object continued its vertiginous course, before evaporating, disappearing completely, extinguishing one would say. Just as it was extinguished, the light returned. Power was restored.
Of the flying object no material trace, except the general electrical failure.
What happened? Flying saucer? Meteorite?
The very numerous witnesses, however, are neither credulous people nor convinced in advance, having no preconceived idea about UFOs.
And to each his own interpretation. Some even go so far as to see in them harbingers of the approaching end of the world. Superstition? Maybe, but then what was it, this UFO on Sfax?
Asked about the origin of the power failure, circles close to STEG, some of whom saw "the luminous body descend from the sky" explained to us:
Substation 150-30, located on the road to Gremda, receives a current with a voltage of 150 kv to transform it into 30 kv.
This station has mysteriously been downgraded. Why? By what phenomenon? We do not know. Still, frequency mismatch is normally caused by current interference. What foreign current acted on that of post 150-30?
We still ask ourselves the question.
One notes, however, that on Monday July 17 already in Sfax the same phenomenon was observed and, strange coincidence, around 10:00 p.m.
