A specialized company said that the cable outage affected 25% of the data flow through the Red Sea Cable (European)

The Associated Press reported - today, Tuesday - that three marine communications cables passing through the waters of the Red Sea were cut, amid reports of damage affecting the accounts of the Facebook and Instagram platforms.

Citing unnamed officials, the agency explained that 3 international cables that pass through the Red Sea and provide Internet and communications around the world were cut off yesterday, without indicating who was responsible for that.

Quoting a statement from Hong Kong-based HGC Global Communications, the Associated Press said that the severed cables include the Asia-Africa-Europe 1 cable, the Europe-India cable, and the Seacom TGN Golf cable.

The company stated that the cable outage affected 25% of the data flow through the Red Sea cable, which it said was “important” for the flow of data from Asia to Europe.

It also said that it had begun redirecting data traffic, without indicating who was responsible for the outage.

At the same time, thousands of users of the Facebook platform, affiliated with Meta, reported reports of problems affecting their accounts on the platform.

According to the Downdetector website, more than 300,000 reports of service outages were submitted to Facebook and more than 20,000 reports to Instagram.

Users are reporting malfunctions that prevent access to the #Facebook and Instagram applications. Are you facing a problem with access as well?

pic.twitter.com/fPlGNFf5Rr

- Al Jazeera Channel (@AJArabic) March 5, 2024

Houthi denial

A few days ago, the Houthi group denied allegations in the Israeli media that they had targeted marine cables, stressing that they were avoiding harming any cables in the Red Sea.

In support of the Palestinian resistance since the escalation of the war on Gaza, the Houthis have been targeting ships owned or operated by Israeli companies or individuals or transporting goods to and from Israel. They have expanded their attacks to include American and British ships following the start of raids on Yemen last January.

Israeli Globes claimed that the Houthis damaged 4 communications cables in the Red Sea between Jeddah and Djibouti, and that repairing them may take at least 8 weeks, according to estimates.

The newspaper added that the incident caused a major disruption in Internet communications between Europe and Asia, but the main damage was in the Gulf countries and India.

Source: Associated Press