Google and other monitoring companies have reported that after a 19-hour blackout Syria's connection to the internet has been restored.

Syria Back Online

Monitoring company Renesys was the first company to report that Syria was back online at 2.15pm GMT, which represents a 19.5 hour blackout, less than half the blackout time of the last internet shut down in November.

Google's Transparency Report, which monitors whether or not its services - such as Gmail, Search and Maps - are available within a particular country, reported services coming back online at around 3pm

The outage was reported by multiple monitoring companies, with all traffic between Syria and Western online services cut since just before 8pm GMT on Tuesday night (10pm local time in Damascus). Dan Hubbard, chief technology officer of Umbrella Security Labs said they notices a significant drop in traffic from 6.45pm GMT last night, but "On closer inspection, it seems Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet."

It remains unclear as to the cause of the blackout, though many people fear it is the result of Assad regime attempting to restrict the movement and communication between activists within the country.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said it was "deeply concerned that this blackout is a deliberate attempt to silence Syria's online communications and further draw a curtain over grave events currently unfolding on the ground in Syria."

The reconnection of the internet comes as AP reports that the Obama administration is providing $100 million in new Syria aid, according to US officials, but the money is for humanitarian purposes only and not linked to any decision on arming Syrian rebels.