Syria goes dark after all international Internet connectivity is cut in the country [Updated]

Syria is entirely off the Internet, specialized research firm Renesys reports. According to its information, the issue started at 10:26 UTC (12:26pm in Damascus).

At the moment, all 84 of Syria’s IP address blocks have become unreachable in the global routing table. In non-technical terms, this means that Syrian Internet users can’t share information with the world.

It is too early to confirm whether this major incident is connected to the ongoing civil war in the country, and Renesys is still investigating the outage. This isn’t the first time Syria got cut off the Internet. As you may remember, it was almost fully disconnected for 40 minutes last July.

According to the AP, Syrian authorities have blocked Internet and phone signals in the captial city of Damascus, as rebels and government troops continue to clash.

Some Twitter users have been posting dial-up numbers for people to use to connect to the Internet, while others suggest that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad may be behind the blackout (though at the time of writing none of this can be confirmed):

Dial up access #Syria: +46850009990 +492317299993 +4953160941030 user:telecomix password:telecomix OR +33172890150 login:toto password:toto

— Aymen AMRI eon (@eon01) November 29, 2012

Update: Syrian information minister says “terrorists,” not the state, cut the Internet, reports pro-government Ikhbariya TV, quoted by Reuters.

Image Credit: nrkbeta/Flickr