© MDA OPERATIONAL COVERAGEMDA ambulance and medics (illustrative).
Comment: Could it be that it was a cyber attack that the authorities later chose to cover up?
The Bezeq Electric company stated that "following the company's initiated night work, a malfunction occurred in all Bezeq lines. The company's engineers are working to restore all services to full operation."
Police, Hatzalah, MDA and Fire Department hotlines are now operational after the initial pause.
According to the Ministry of Communications, the faults will be fixed throughout the night.
Services restored
"In continuation to the previous message, we would like to update that an initial review revealed a malfunction occurred during infrastructure work, affecting Bezek telecommunication lines (not just emergency lines)," the Police Spokesperson's Unit said in a statement.
"The issue is being addressed by the relevant authorities," the statement continued.
Comment: Notably, similar incidents were reported in the UK, and US, also this year:
- Cyberattack disrupts hospitals in several US states, some emergency rooms forced to close
- UK telecoms missed nearly 11,500 emergency calls during weekend 999 outage
Other significant and disruptive cyber attacks of late:- Germany's banking regulator BaFin hit by cyberattack (Sept)
- Cyberattacks take down Canadian medical software provider, China's Wuhan earthquake monitoring service (27th July)
- Norway's government ministries hit by 'extremely serious' cyber attack (25th July)
- Cyberattack on major energy company disrupts supply at gas stations in Canada (27th June)
- Sweden parliament hit by denial-of-service cyber attack as Nordic leaders prepared to meet with Zelensky in Finland (4th May)
- 'Computer glitch' hits Paris airport's border control causing long delays (4th March)
See also: Israeli firm boasts it can hack all iPhones, Android and Flagship Samsungs