JERUSALEM: Internet connectivity in the Gaza Strip is being restored, the global network monitor Netblocks said Sunday, almost two days after it was cut off during heavy Israeli bombardment.
“Real-time network data show that Internet connectivity is being restored in the #Gaza Strip,” the company wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
An AFP employee in Gaza City said shortly after 4am (0200 GMT) that he could use the Internet and had managed to contact people in southern Gaza by phone.
Internet and phone access had been cut off across Gaza since Friday, as Israel bombarded the territory.
Israel unleashed a massive bombing campaign after Hamas gunmen stormed across the Gaza border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seizing 230 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
Since then, relentless Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed more than 8,000 people, half of them children, the Hamas-controlled health ministry said Saturday.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said the communications blackout had blocked emergency calls and disrupted critical ambulance services.
Gaza connectivity ‘being restored’: Internet monitor Netblocks
https://arab.news/rmm6k
Gaza connectivity ‘being restored’: Internet monitor Netblocks
Two Tunisia columnists handed over three years in prison
- Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies have already been in detention for almost two years
- They were due to be released in January 2025 but have remained in custody on charges of money laundering
TUNIS: Two prominent Tunisian columnists were sentenced on Thursday to three and a half years in prison each for money laundering and tax evasion, according to a relative and local media.
The two men, Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies, have already been in detention for almost two years for statements considered critical of President Kais Saied’s government, made on radio, television programs and social media.
They were due to be released in January 2025 but have remained in custody on charges of money laundering and tax evasion.
“Three and a half years for Mourad and Borhen,” Zeghidi’s sister, Meriem Zeghidi Adda, wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
Since Saied’s power grab, which granted him sweeping powers on July 25, 2021, local and international NGOs have denounced a regression of rights and freedoms in Tunisia.
Dozens of opposition figures and civil society activists are being prosecuted under a presidential decree officially aimed at combatting “fake news” but subject to a very broad interpretation denounced by human rights defenders.
Others, including opposition leaders, have been sentenced to heavy prison terms in a mega-trial of “conspiracy against state security.”
In 2025, Tunisia fell 11 places in media watchdog Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, dropping from 118th to 129th out of 180 countries.
