Internet service has been partially restored in Afghanistan after a two-day outage. NetBlocks, which monitors global network disruptions, notes that access has begun to return amid widespread discontent among local residents.
Modern.az reports, citing foreign media, that after the internet was restored, people flocked to the streets to celebrate.
Taliban representatives in power attributed the outage to technical problems. In an official statement to “Al Jazeera”, they claimed that old fiber-optic cables needed to be replaced.
"The claim that we banned the internet is baseless", - Taliban officials said.
However, according to an informed source at the BBC, the restoration of the service occurred by special instruction of the Taliban Prime Minister.
This is the Taliban's first public statement regarding the communication outages that began on September 29.
NetBlocks previously recorded “a complete shutdown of the internet” in the country of 43 million people, which also affected telephone service.
The 48-hour shutdown severely impacted key economic sectors. According to Amu TV, Kabul airport was forced to cancel all flights due to lack of service. According to Khaama Press, hundreds of passengers remained stranded at Dubai airport among those awaiting flights to Afghanistan. The banking system and trade also experienced severe disruptions.
The UN mission in Afghanistan called on the Taliban to immediately restore full internet access, warning that the restrictions “could cause significant harm to the Afghan people, threaten economic stability, and exacerbate one of the world's worst humanitarian crises”.
