At 5:26 a.m. New York time (12:26 p.m. in Damascus), Syria’s internet went dark. According to two U.S. internet monitoring companies, Renesys and Akamai Technologies, Syria is now completely cut off from the e-world, with all internet connections down along with at least some phone service. “A smaller outage could be chalked up to an errant mortar shell,” but the entire country? says Sam Biddle at Gizmodo. “Only the Syrian regime has the power to create that kind of lockout at will.”

“Shutting down web and phone service is a tactic increasingly pursued by countries to limit the spread of information both within the country and to the outside world,” says Shara Tibken at CNET News. Without communication, the anti-government rebels are cut off from one another, limiting their ability to fight. 

Why Bashar al-Assad unplugged the internet in Syria