An Israeli tank faces damaged buildings in the Gaza Strip, January 19, 2024. (Credit: Jack Guez/AFP)
GAZA — Gaza residents have been largely without internet and telephone services for a week, an internet monitor said on Friday. The ongoing communications blackout has become the longest outage since the Hamas-Israel war broke out on Oct. 7.
Internet services in the Gaza Strip have been constantly disrupted throughout the war, with telecom firms blaming Israel's bombardment of the besieged territory for the outages. The "near-total telecoms blackout" has now lasted for 168 hours, NetBlocks posted on X.
⚠ Update: Live metrics show the near-total telecoms blackout in the #Gaza Strip has now passed the one-week mark; at 168 hours, the disruption is the longest on record since the start of the Israel-Hamas war and continues to severely limit visibility into events on the ground ? pic.twitter.com/IVRbzmM2oa
— NetBlocks (@netblocks) January 19, 2024
The United Nations has warned that the blackouts are worsening the Palestinian territory's already dire humanitarian situation. "The blackout of telecommunications prevents people in Gaza from accessing lifesaving information or calling for first responders and impedes other forms of humanitarian response," the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said on Thursday.