Mediterranean Fiber Optic Cables Cut, Disrupting Middle East Communications
December 19th, 2008Here we go again.
Via: Bloomberg:
Internet and telephone communications between the Middle East and Europe were disrupted by submarine cable failures between Italy and Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea.
The failures cut the flow of “data of various kinds” between Europe and the Middle East, and there’s no timeframe for when communications will be restored, said Sanjeev Gaur, director of assurance at Mumbai-based Reliance Globalcom Ltd.
Three submarine cable systems linking Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe are affected, according to Reliance and Melbourne-based Telstra Corp. The cables run from Alexandria in northern Egypt to southern Italy. In January, two cable systems were severed by an anchor 8.3 kilometers (5.2 miles) from Alexandria beach after bad weather conditions forced ships to moor off the coast.
A fault is affecting the SMW4 cable near the Alexandria cable station, the FLAG FEA cable is down and the SMW3 cable system is also affected, according to information received from Telstra. Flag Telecom Group Ltd. operates FLAG FEA and the other cables are owned by groups of phone companies across the regions.
Reliance Globalcom leases capacity on the SMW 3 and SMW 4 cable systems that run in the Mediterranean, said Anurag Joshi, head of the global network operations center at the company. Joshi said he doesn’t know exactly what happened and that engineers were working on it.
The SMW4 cable, also known as SEA-ME-WE 4 or South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 cable network, connects 12 countries including Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy and France.
Research Credit: Bernard Marx haha
This just in from the Coincidence Industrial Complex. Egypt, December 19 expiration, Death.
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200812191644.htm
Eight Palestinians killed in Israel Air Force strikes in Gaza
Jerusalem(PTI): Eight Palestinians were killed in two Israel Air Force strikes in the Gaza Strip hours after Hamas declaredan end to Egypt brokered six months truce with Israel, media reports said.
Three armed Hamas insurgents were killed in an air strike on Tufah in the southern Gaza Strip and 5 other Palestinians were killed in the northern Gaza Strip, Israel Radio was quoted as saying by the Palestinians sources.
Amid escalation in violence during the last one week when Palestinian militants fired several rockets and Israel carried out retaliatory air strikes on Gaza targeting launching pads, Hamas, which has complete control over the coastal Strip, announced that it is calling off the six month ceasefire.
“The calm, which was reached with Egyptian sponsorship on June 19 and expires on December 19, is finished because the enemy did not abide by its obligations,” Hamas spokesman, Ayman Taha, who represented the group in talks with other Palestinian factions, said.
“The calm is over,”Taha asserted.
Palestinian militant factions fired eleven rockets and six mortar shells on Thursday in addition to twenty on Wednesday, the Israeli army said.
Another one of those dastardly cable-seeking anchors, no doubt. When will that stop making those things?!