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

"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.

State media also reported that Internet services were partially disrupted.

Electricity blackouts have been frequent in the course of Syria's five-year conflict but it is rare for the whole country to be affected. Previous blackouts were blamed on rebel attacks targeting the electricity network but no reason was giving for Thursday's blackout