Syria’s electric network was down in the entire country Thursday for unknown reasons, Syrian state media reported (although it isn’t clear how). The blackout affected all the many fighting factions everywhere. On Thursday evening an Electricity Ministry source told SANA power is gradually returning to Syrian areas after the cause of outage was found. The source noted that the network will be restored to its earlier capacity by midnight. At about the same time Thursday, the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment said Internet service is back, after a fault that earlier caused a partial outage to all the provinces has been fixed.
A different source reported power suddenly went out in all the provinces and maintenance teams have been working to identify the cause of the outage and fix it.
Electricity blackouts have been a frequent phenomenon during the 5-year Syrian civil war, but it is rare for the entire country to be affected at the same time, according to AP. Blackouts are normally blamed on rebel attacks on the electric network.