Millions lose internet after cable accident

A SIMPLE accident involving a ship’s anchor wrecked internet access for a huge slice of the world yesterday.

Experts said the chaos caused by the severing of two undersea cables pointed to the system’s vulnerability to terrorist or other attacks. After the cables were cut by the anchor off Egypt’s coast, India woke to its network in chaos. Widespread service failures also hampered a wide swathe of the Middle East.

Officials said it could take a week or more to fix the cables, in part because of bad weather. Several countries were struggling to reroute traffic to satellites and to other cables through Asia. In all, users in India, Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain were affected. Israel escaped because its internet traffic is connected to Europe through a different undersea cable, and Lebanon and Iraq were normal.