Red Sea cable cuts disrupt Internet in Asia and Middle East

Internet services in parts of Asia and the Middle East were disrupted Sunday after undersea fiber-optic cables in the Red Sea were cut, though the cause of the incident remains unclear.

Microsoft warned on its service status page that users in the Middle East “may experience increased latency” due to the damage, though it said Internet traffic routed outside the region was unaffected. Monitoring group NetBlocks reported that outages affected multiple countries, including India and Pakistan, citing failures on the South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 (SMW4) and India–Middle East–Western Europe (IMEWE) systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan Telecommunications Co. confirmed the disruption on Saturday, while users in the United Arab Emirates complained of slower speeds on state-owned providers Du and Etisalat. Authorities in Saudi Arabia and the UAE did not immediately acknowledge the outages. Operators of the cables, Tata Communications and an Alcatel-Lucent–led consortium, have not commented.

Undersea cables form the backbone of the global Internet. They are vulnerable to accidental damage from ship anchors but can also be deliberately targeted. Repairs often take weeks as ships must locate and fix the affected sections.

The disruption comes amid heightened tensions in the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Houthi rebels have targeted shipping since late 2023 in what they describe as pressure on Israel over the Gaza conflict. The Houthis have denied previous allegations of cutting Internet cables but on Sunday acknowledged the outages via their Al-Masirah TV channel, citing NetBlocks.

From November 2023 through December 2024, the Houthis attacked more than 100 vessels with missiles and drones, sinking four ships and killing at least eight crew members. Although the group paused attacks during a brief ceasefire, they later resumed and sank two more vessels in July, killing four.

The incident comes as efforts to secure another ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war remain uncertain and U.S.-Iran nuclear talks are in limbo following Israel’s recent 12-day military campaign against Tehran, which included U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.