Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib / Anadolu via Getty Images
The Gaza Strip is suffering a near-total connectivity outage as the Israeli Defense Forces announced Friday that it was “expanding ground operations” in the region.
As of Friday, the connectivity tracker NetBlocks reported “a collapse in connectivity in the Gaza Strip,” with one of the largest and last remaining Palestinian telecom providers, Paltel, being highly impacted by intense airstrikes. Paltel said it had sustained “a complete disruption of all communication and internet services” as a result of the barrage, according to The Washington Post.
Since Israel cut off much of Gaza’s access to electricity earlier this month, the strip has largely relied on other power sources like generators to support connectivity. But in recent days,…