Syrian state media said on Thursday, March 3 the electricity network was down across the whole of the country for unknown reasons and that Internet connections were also partly down, Reuters reports.

"The electricity network has been cut in all governorates," state news agency SANA said, reporting a source in the Ministry for Electricity.

"Attempts to find out the cause of the outage have begun."

A Reuters witness confirmed that electricity had been cut in Damascus, the news agency says.

State media also reported that Internet services were partially disrupted.