Just a week after a previous online blackout, Syria is once again cut off from the global Internet. The latest disruption started at 07:01 UTC/03:01 a.m. ET, according to Internet monitoring firm Renesys. As Google and Akamai confirmed the outage, Syrian authorities were quick to blame it on a faulty cable.

Syrian Internet offline again 07:01 UTC / 10:00am local.BGP down, inbound traceroutes failing, nameservers and gov websites down. — Renesys Corporation (@renesys) May 15, 2013

As it usually happens in these cases, the reasons behind the widespread outage are a matter of perspective. Syrian authorities have already blamed the outage on technical issues, like they've done on previous occasions. The state news agency SANA blamed a malfunctioning fiber-optic cable.

According to the AFP, Bakr Bakr, the director-general of Syria's telecoms firm, told SANA that "maintenance and repair work is underway to reestablish the Internet and telecommunications across Syria as soon as possible."

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Outside Syria, this claim is seen with skepticism. Renesys' Chief Technological Officer Jim Cowie speculated in a tweet that this latest disruption might have been done on purpose to prevent Syrians from hearing the news of the upcoming U.N. resolution on Syria. The United Nations is expected to approve a resolution backing a political transition in Syria on Wednesday and condemning Assad's regime. Such a resolution won't necessarily have a direct effect on the bloody conflict, but it would be yet another diplomatic blow to the regime.

The last Internet blackout in Syria happened on May 7, and it lasted 19 hours. In November, Syria also suffered a similar outage.

UPDATE, 2:15 p.m.: At 15:26 UTC/11.16 a.m ET Internet in Syria has started to return, as reported by Akamai and Renesys. The total duration of the outage has been 11 hours and 25 minutes.

Image via Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images