Internet traffic also has been hit by the incident, according to Danny McPherson, chief security officer with Arbor Networks. His company's sensors reported that between 3,000 and 5,000 Internet routes in the region were off-line early Friday morning. These routes are the Internet's equivalent of dialing prefixes, meaning that computers that used them would be completely unreachable until service was restored.

"It's significant that it was lost," he said "For them it was in the middle of a business day on Friday."

A large number of these came back on-line around 17:00 UTC, McPherson said. Most likely this happened after ISPs (Internet service providers) that had been knocked off-line had found alternate routes for their traffic.

It's hard to estimate how many Internet users were affected by the cut, but the Internet has a total of close to 300,000 such routes, he said.

This is not the first time this year that these cables have been cut. Earlier this year both the Sea Me We 4 and Flag cables were cut. Flag's cable was reportedly cut by ships anchored off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt.