December 2, 2012 -- Updated 1406 GMT (2206 HKT)
Children swarm local volunteers as they literally scrape the bottom of pots for some kind of food. Arwa Damon reports.
Inside an embattled Syrian city, CNN's Arwa Damon finds children
scraping the bottom of pots for scraps and eating burnt food as
neighborhood volunteers are swamped by hungry kids.
WATCH
|
RETURN TO HOMES
December 2, 2012 -- Updated 1504 GMT (2304 HKT)
See photos of the intensifying unrest in Syria over the months.
(CNN) -- Syria's two-day Internet blackout was "a
mental war" inflicted by the government, an opposition activist said
Sunday, as service to the country was largely restored.
Opposition accuses Syria of 'mental war' after Internet blackout
December 2, 2012 -- Updated 1504 GMT (2304 HKT)
Residents return to homes in Syria
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: State-run TV shows graphic images of bodies of rebels killed in town near Lebanon
- "So far, all areas that had Internet service before Thursday are connected," opposition says
- The outage sparks fears that the government is stepping up efforts to quash the uprising
- The government has blamed "terrorists" for the blackout
"So far, all areas that
had Internet service before Thursday are connected," said Alexia Jade, a
spokeswoman for the opposition Damascus Media Office.
While Internet access is back, theories and concerns abound on what caused the outage.
It also sparked fears
that the government is stepping up efforts to quash the uprising by
crushing the flow of information and alienating the country from the
outside world.
"It appears to be back to
normal, but it is impossible to tell if filtering or monitoring
technology was installed during the outage," said Matthew Prince, CEO of
CloudFlare, an Internet security company.
Global Web monitors said the country lost contact with the Web on Thursday, plunging into an Internet black hole.
Syria's information
minister said "terrorists" cut the cable, knocking out Web communication
with other countries. The government uses the word "terrorists" to
refer to rebels in the ongoing civil war, and blamed them for car
bombing near a mosque in Homs that killed 15 people and wounded 24
others Sunday.
According to state-run
media, a car bomb in Barzeh killed three people. Syrian TV also showed
graphic pictures of bodies in a field and reported 21 rebels were killed
as they tried to smuggle weapons into Talkalakh, a town near the border
with Lebanon. The military also carried out operations in Aleppo,
state-run media said.
At least eight rebels
died in Aleppo when they were bombed by warplanes as they attacked
Syrian military positions, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights said. The group claimed the Syrian military also bombed targets
in Damascus and Reef al-Raqqa.
More than 42,000 people
have died in the Syrian conflict since the uprising began in March 2011,
according to opposition activists. CNN cannot confirm claims by the
government or the opposition because of government restrictions that
prevent journalists from reporting freely within Syria.
During the Syrian
rebellion, anti-government fighters have routinely used the Web to
transmit bloody images, including what they say are military attacks on
civilians.
Rebel leaders accused the government of creating the blackout to hide its mass killings from the outside world.
"The regime knows that
Internet is the main communication method for us," Jade said. "Taking
that down is almost like blinding the normal Internet users related to
the revolution."
Internet and cell phone
coverage were restored Saturday to most Syrian provinces, according to
the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The same day, state
media reported the Internet and communications lines were back in
service in Damascus and its suburbs, blaming the outage on a malfunction
in the main grid.
A Web security expert said the outage was almost certainly the work of the Syrian government.
Prince said his firm's
investigations showed that all four Internet cables linking Syria to the
outside world would have had to been cut simultaneously for a whole
country outage to occur.
CNN's Salma Abdelaziz, Faith Karimi, Samira Said and Laura Smith-Spark contributed to this report.
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