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In the 4th undersea telecommunications cable to lose connectivity within 3 days across the Middle East, Internet services in Qatar have been seriously disrupted, ensuring ongoing loss of communications across the Middle East from Egypt to India, with the exceptions of US-occupied Iraq, Isratine, Lebanon and Iran.

Qatar Telecom (Qtel) said on Sunday the cable was damaged between the Qatari island of Haloul and the UAE (United Arab Emirates) island of Das on Friday.

The cause of damage is not yet clear, but ArabianBusiness.com has been told unofficially the problem is related to the power system and not the result of a ship’s anchor cutting the cable, the implausible theory touted by European and American media networks.

Physical breaks to undersea communications cables take at the very least several days and on occasion weeks to repair, due to the technical difficulties involved and requirement of specialized cable ships to reach the scene. Weather, logistics and locations affect the time required to effect a repair.

However damage can be mitigated as in the case of Qatar by finding alternative routes for transmission, where available, and Qatar has so far managed to keep internet capacity at around 60% after taking such measures.

Telecommunications and internet services have been affected in other Gulf countries, UAE’s Etisalat is expected to release a statement on Monday.

Much of the Middle East and West Asia, including the Gulf Arab region, Egypt, Sri Lanka and West India were plunged into a virtual internet blackout since Wednesday when two undersea cables were cut near Alexandria, on Egypt’s north coast, supplying communications to Europe and North America.

The initial breaches were in segments of two intercontinental cables known as Sea-ME-We-4 and Flag Europe-Asia, run by British company FLAG telecom.

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