The government of Bangladesh has imposed a nationwide communications shut down amidst recent protests.

The disruptions are not connected to the global outage caused by a CrowdStrike outage that took place on July 19.

A post from connectivity tracker NetBlocks on Twitter/X said Bangladesh had been cut off from the world for more than six hours.

An announcement on the night of July 18 said the government was blocking mobile Internet access, shutting down news broadcasts, and access to social media for security reasons.

In a report from the Guardian, the telecommunications minister, Zuniad Ahmed Palak, said social media “had been weaponised as a tool to spread rumors, lies, and disinformation.”

Only some voice calls have been working in Bangladesh, with no mobile data or broadband. Social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp have not been working since last night.

This morning, the state broadcasting headquarters BTV in Dhaka was stormed and set alight by protesters. Authorities said the building was safely evacuated, but the channel has not been on air since.

Conflicts have spread outside of the capital Dhaka into 26 other districts.

Protests began this month when students on university campuses demanded an end to the quota system that reserves 30 percent of government jobs for relatives of veterans in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971.

At least 33 people have died during the protests, though the exact toll is difficult to assess given the communications shutdown. The protesters have been met with tear gas, rubber bullets, and stun grenades.

We will update this story as we learn more