The week-long telecommunications blackout in Gaza has become a “matter of life and death” and should end immediately, Al Jazeera quotes digital civil rights group Access Now as saying.

Gaza’s ongoing internet shutdown has hampered critical aid coordination and made it “increasingly difficult, if not outright impossible” to document and share events on the ground, it said.

“It is unconscionable to toy with connectivity amidst unprecedented violence and unfathomable human suffering,” said Marwa Fatafta, the group’s policy and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa in a statement.

“Internet shutdowns must not be used as weapons of war. Access Now continues to call for an immediate physical and digital ceasefire and for the full restoration of telecommunications services in the Gaza Strip.”