A broken submarine fiber-optic cable 50 kilometers (30 miles) off the coast of the Egyptian city of Alexandria has caused a nationwide Internet blackout in Lebanon, the Telecommunications Ministry said today.

Eight countries have been affected by the outage, which started yesterday evening, the ministry said in a text message. Lebanon is working with Cyprus and Egypt to resolve the problem, it said.

Lebanon is among few nations that rely entirely on a single submarine cable for Internet connectivity, making it vulnerable to such blackouts, Telecommunications Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui said, according to the Daily Star newspaper.

To contact the reporter on this story: Donna Abu-Nasr in Beirut at dabunasr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net