Undersea cables crossing the Red Sea were cut this weekend, leading to wide-spread Internet  disruptions across the Middle East and Asia.

India, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates have been effected by the cuts, with Microsoft’s cloud service Azure reporting issues.

“Undersea fibre cuts can take time to repair, as such we will continuously monitor, rebalance, and optimise routing to reduce customer impact in the meantime,” Microsoft said in a status update.

Undersea cables are essentially the backbone of a global internet, enabling the transfer of a vast amount of the world’s internet traffic and data.

Around 95% of intercontinental internet data flows through these sea cables, as they are more reliable and have a higher capacity than satellites.

Microsoft has yet to reveal what caused the incident – it could be caused accidentally by anchors, or could have been a purposeful attack on the vital infrastructure.

The network issues have been attributed by internet monitoring organisation NetBlocks to SMW4 and IEWE cables off the coast of Saudi Arabia, with the disruption starting early Saturday morning.

There is growing concern that the interruption has been caused by the Yemini rebel group the Houthis, which have continued their disruptions to trade and naval operations in the Red Sea in an effort to stop the genocide in Gaza. Microsoft has specifically been implicated in the Israeli military’s efforts to serveil Palestinians, with the Israeli government and military using Azure to store data.

So far, however, the Iranian-backed rebel group has not taken credit for the cuts, and have denied such accusations in the past.

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The cuts have continued to disrupt services, with “slow speeds and intermittent access” still occurring on Sunday, according to Microsoft.

The reliance on subsea cables for essential internet access has drawn international attention to the cables vulnerability to accidental and targeted damage and destruction.

Just this year, a ship was seized by Swedish authorities that allegedly damaged cables running int he Baltic Sea – prosecution however remains elusive when it comes to these allegations.

NATO launched Baltic Sentry as European countries expressed concerns that Russia may interrupt essential data cables with targeted attacks. Taiwanese officials have also expressed growing concern over the vulnerability of undersea cables as they seized a ship with a Chinese crew over the alleged deliberate cutting of an undersea cable off its coast.