DAMASCUS, Syria

Telecommunications and internet services have been affected in Syria’s southern provinces of Daraa and Suwayda after a fiber-optic cable linking Damascus and Daraa was severed on Sunday, local authorities said.

The Daraa Governorate said on its Telegram channel that the cable was severed in Damascus province, causing telecommunications and internet services to go offline in Daraa and Suwayda.

It added that maintenance teams had been dispatched to identify the fault, repair it and restore services.

The cause of the outage was not yet clear. It was not immediately known whether it was the result of sabotage or adverse weather conditions, particularly as several provinces experienced heavy rainfall since Saturday evening.

*Writing by Rania Abushamala in Istanbul