Internet collapses in Yemen after recent attacks by rebels targeting Israel, US
A previous outage occurred in January 2022 when the Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis bombed a telecommunications building
Internet access across the war-torn nation of Yemen collapsed early Friday without explanation, web monitors said.
The outage began early Friday around 0000 GMT and saw all traffic halt at YemenNet, the country’s main provider to some 10 million users, which is now controlled by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
Both NetBlocks, a group tracking internet outages, and the internet services company CloudFlare reported the outage. Neither offered a cause for the collapse.
“Data shows that the issue has impacted connectivity at a national level as well,” CloudFlare said.
Several hours later, some service was restored, though access remained troubled. In a statement to the Houthi-controlled SABA state news agency, Yemen’s Public Telecom Corp. blamed the outage on maintenance.
“Internet service will return after the completion of the maintenance work,” the statement quotes an unidentified official as saying.
A previous outage occurred in January 2022 when the Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis in Yemen bombed a telecommunications building in the Red City port city of Hodeida. There was no immediate word of a similar attack in this case.
The undersea FALCON cable carries internet into Yemen through the Hodeida port along the Red Sea for TeleYemen. The FALCON cable has another landing in Yemen’s far eastern port of Ghaydah as well, but the majority of Yemen’s population lives in its west along the Red Sea.
The outage came after a series of recent drone and missile attacks by the Houthis targeting Israel amid its campaign of airstrikes and a ground offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. That includes a claimed missile strike Thursday again targeting the Israeli port city of Eilat on the Red Sea. Israel said its long-range Arrow air defense system intercepted the missile.
In recent weeks, the Houthis have attempted to fire drones and missiles at Eilat, though in all the attempts the projectiles were either intercepted or missed their targets.
Last week, the Houthis claimed a drone attack and said they had carried out three earlier strikes with drones and ballistic missiles.
They have said they are acting as part of the “axis of resistance” against Israel, which includes Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
The ongoing war in Gaza erupted when Hamas terrorists stormed across the border into southern Israel on October 7, massacring some 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seizing over 240 hostages in the deadliest attack in the Jewish state’s history.
Houthi forces “continue to carry out more qualitative military operations in support of the Palestinian people… until the brutal Israeli aggression against our brothers in Gaza stops,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree posted on X Monday.
Meanwhile, the Houthis also shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone this week with a surface-to-air missile, part of a wide series of attacks in the Mideast raising concerns about a regional war breaking out.
