Syria News: Internet Blacks Out for 19 Hours, Government Denies Responsibility

After a 19-hour blackout, internet service has been restored to war-torn Syria.

Last night, all internet traffic into and out of Syria ceased. The authoritarian regime, which has been waging a bloody civil war against its own people that has resulted in over 60,000 deaths over the last two years blamed the outage on a severed optic cable.

However, international observers say a government-enacted shutdown is the most likely cause. "Our monitoring shows that Syria's international internet connectivity is through at least four providers, and published submarine cable maps show connectivity through three active cables. As such, the failure of a single optical cable is unlikely to cause a complete internet outage for the country," said David Belson of Akamai, and internet traffic monitoring organization.

The situation mirrors a similar shutdown five months ago. Rebels and the international community worried the government was preparing for a large assault, restricting internet access to prevent communication among the opposition and word of deaths and war crimes from being reported abroad.

"The Syrian government has been monitoring the internet for years," U.S Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said in November. "They have been using the Internet with Iranian assistance to track opposition activists, arrest and kill them."

A heavy offensive did not materialize five months ago, nor does it seems to have happened this time. In any case, the Syrian regime has been none to careful about letting word of its abuses reach the outside world. Refugees continue to pour into neighboring countries.

Mobile phones and landlines continued to operate normally during this blackout, so it is still unknown what advantage the Syrian regime might have gained from shutting down the internet.

"We're deeply concerned that this blackout is a deliberate attempt to silence Syria's online communications and further draw a curtain over grave events currently unfolding on the ground in Syria," the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a statement.

For now, contacts on the ground are still reporting in, and it could be some time before the events that took place last night come to light.