Internet, phone lines severed in Gaza again

Palestinians reported another widespread outage of internet and phone service in Gaza early on Wednesday, hours after Israeli air strikes levelled apartment buildings near Gaza City and as ground troops battled Hamas militants inside the besieged territory.

The Palestinian telecoms company Paltel reported a “complete disruption” of internet and mobile phone services in Gaza, marking the second time in five days that residents were largely cut off from the world. Communications also went down over the weekend, as Israeli troops pushed into Gaza in larger numbers.

Humanitarian aid agencies have warned that such blackouts severely disrupt their work in an already dire situation in Gaza, where more than half of the population of 2.3 million Palestinians has been displaced and basic supplies are running low more than three weeks into the war triggered by Hamas’s bloody October 7 rampage into southern Israel.

Attempts to reach Gaza residents by phone were unsuccessful early Wednesday. Internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks.org confirmed that Gaza “is in the midst of a total or near-total telecoms blackout consistent with” the weekend blackout. (AP)