Internet connections in Syria are coming back online after a nearly day-long outage, according to data from service tracking companies.
The outage began at approximately 3 p.m. ET Tuesday, sparking fears the country's military was preparing an assault against rebel forces following an Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah-bound shipment of guided missiles in Damascus. On top of that, interruptions in Syrian Internet service have in the past coincided with significant military operations in the country.
Those fears, however, were perhaps unwarranted: connections appear to be at least partially restored as of 11 a.m. ET Wednesday with no notable cooresponding escalation in violence. The following chart from Google shows Internet activity in the country over that time period.
Syrian state media blamed the outage on a faulty cable, though experts indicated to the BBC that was unlikely. Dan Hubbard, Chief Technology Officer at online security company OpenDNS, speculated the outage might have been the result of government tampering.
"Although we can’t yet comment on what caused this outage, past incidents were linked to both government-ordered shutdowns and damage to the infrastructure, which included fiber cuts and power outages," wrote Hubbard on Tuesday.
The Internet has become essentially a parallel theatre of combat in the Syrian conflict. Anti-government rebels use it to coordinate, share news and connect with the outside world. Hackers aligned with the Syrian government attack news outlets and other organizations they view as anti-government, often hijacking Twitter accounts to spread propaganda.
Internet connections in Syria have suffered countrywide outages before. A similar outage hit Egypt during the height of its revolution against former leader Hosni Mubarak. The United States State Department has been providing rebel groups in Syria with technology to stay connected to the Internet when other means of connectivity fail.