Libyan Internet service cut again: monitors

Internet service has been completely severed in violence-torn Libya for the second time in two weeks, US online traffic monitoring firms said Friday.

Arbor Networks said all Internet traffic in and out of Libya "abruptly ceased" between 1630 GMT and 1700 GMT on Thursday.

"This outage follows several weeks of periodic Internet outages and reduced traffic volumes likely related to the ongoing social and political events in the country," it said.

Fierce clashes were reported in Libya on Friday between rebels and forces loyal to Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.

Another Web traffic monitoring firm, Renesys, said Internet service from Libya went down shortly after 1635 GMT on Thursday.

"It looks like this is more than a blip -- radio silence for 12 hours and counting," Renesys said in a blog post on Friday.

"All of the Libyan-hosted government websites we tested (ie, the ones that are actually hosted in Libya, and not elsewhere) were unreachable," it said.

Google, which tracks the status of products such as Google Search and YouTube in various countries, reported that the services and others were abruptly unavailable in Libya since Thursday.

Internet traffic in and out of Libya was completely severed for the first time on February 18.

(c) 2011 AFP