According to US-based Internet monitoring sites, the internet in Syria has been completely shut down.
Rensey posted a note on its website today that said "in the global routing table, all 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet."
Internet monitoring company Akamai tweeted this chart from that shows the dramatic drop in Syrian internet traffic:
Syria is in the midst of a bloody civil conflict that began with protests in March 2011. Activists believe around 40,000 people have been killed, the AP reports. Reuters is reporting that phone lines in Damascus are only working sporadically.
One remarkable feature of the war has been that the online proxy war between supporters of the regime and the Syrian rebels. As Max Fisher of the Washington Post points out, this may be why Bashar al-Assad's regime took so long to take this drastic step, why it's unclear who really gains from the action.
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