Internet and telecommunications in Syria were down across the country, the state news agency SANA reported on Wednesday, saying a fault with a fibre-optic cable was to blame.

"Maintenance and repair work is underway to reestablish the Internet and telecommunications across Syria as soon as possible," Bakr Bakr, the director-general of Syria's telecoms firm told SANA.

The outage was also reported by Google, which showed a drop-off in Internet service that started on Wednesday morning, and by Internet tracking firm Renesys.

Internet in Syria has regularly been cut, most recently on May 7, with it being restored some 24 hours later.

At the time, SANA also blamed the outage on technical problems, though activists said the government was to blame for the cut.