Syria vanishes from the web

Syria has disappeared from the internet. That’s not an exaggeration either, nearly the entire Middle Eastern country has been cut off from the web.

A post from research company Renesys reveals that what effectively amounts to all of Syria’s internet connectivity shut down earlier today:

Starting at 10:26 UTC (12:26pm in Damascus), Syria’s international Internet connectivity shut down. In the global routing table, all 84 of Syria’s IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet.

We are investigating the dynamics of the outage and will post updates as they become available.

A more detailed post reveals that 77 networks, representing 92% of the routed networks in the country experienced an outage.

The outage comes among increasing violence in the country. According to the Daily Star, the government cut off internet as well as cell phone activity amid increasingly fierce clashes between government troops and rebels.

Emirates airline has meanwhile stopped all flights into the country as Damascus airport is currently unreachable, as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad appears to be preparing for a military showdown with those who oppose him.

Fixed telephone lines appear to be working intermittently, as are satellite phones. The war on the ground in the country has been mirrored by an online war, which has seen both sides hacking major sites including Al Jazeera and Reuters.