Experts say the shutdown was likely caused by President Bashar Assad's regime, raising fears that the government is taking increasingly bold measures to cut off the country from the outside world as it tries to crush a relentless rebellion.
Renesys, a U.S.-based network monitoring firm that studies Internet disruptions, said in a statement Saturday that service went back up around 4:32 p.m. local time in Syria, describing it as a "largely complete restoration of the Syrian Internet."
Mobile telephone networks also appeared to be mostly back up Saturday. A Britain-based activist group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said it was receiving dispatches from many parts of the country. Many land lines had remained in working order.
The SANA state news agency said technical teams brought both Internet and telephone services back online Saturday in Damascus and its suburbs -- the flashpoints of recent fighting between government soldiers and rebels.
