Industry news

Experts refuse to rule out sabotage in damaged cable case

Telecoms experts have refused to rule out sabotage as a possible cause of the damage to a number of submarine cables in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf in January and February.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has said that it is not yet clear how all the cables were damaged but indicated that a deliberate act of sabotage had not been eliminated as a possibility, website heise.de reported.

At a recent security conference in the Middle East, the ITU's director of telecommunication development, Sami Al Basheer Al Morshid, is reported to have explained that it would be necessary to wait until a full investigation was carried out before deliberate damage could be completely ruled out.

"Some specialists doubt that anchoring ships could have accidentally severed the cable," he explained to the website.

"The cables are laid at great depths and in areas where no shipping is permitted."