Israel Matzav

Rebels close Damascus airport, internet connections down

Rebels have caused the closure of Damascus Airport, and someone keeps taking down the country's internet connections.

A rebel fighter who identified himself as Abu Omar, a member of the Jund Allah brigade, told Reuters that insurgents fired mortars at the airport's runways and were blocking the road linking it with the capital.

He said insurgents were not inside the airport but were able to block access to and from it.

Another source in a Damascus rebel unit said mortars had been used in clashes near the airport but did not know whether rebels had fired mortars directly at the airport.

Their accounts could not be immediately verified because of severe restrictions on media access to Syria.

Two Austrian soldiers in a UN peacekeeping force deployed in the Golan Heights, disputed by Syria and Israel, were wounded when their convoy came under fire near the Damascus airport, the defense ministry said in Vienna.

An official at EgyptAir said it had cancelled its Friday flight to Damascus due to the "deteriorating situation" around the airport. He said the airline would hold an urgent meeting in the next few hours with Egyptian officials to discuss halting all flights between Egypt and Syria.

Residents also reported Internet connections in the capital were down and mobile and land telephone lines working only sporadically in what appeared to be the worst disruption to communications in Syria since an uprising began 20 months ago.

Syria's minister of information claimed that "terrorists", not the state, were responsible for a countrywide Internet outage, a pro-government TV station said.

It looks like the game may soon be over in Syria. Unfortunately, the country is about to fall to al-Qaeda.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Damascus, Syrian uprising

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:17 AM