“Because of the position on the Gaza war.” Pirates block two official websites in Bahrain

Two websites belonging to two Bahraini ministries could not be accessed on Tuesday night, after a statement said hackers had blocked them due to the Kingdom’s stance on the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

In a statement published online, the group that calls itself Flood, Arabic for “flood”, talks about hacker attacks on the websites of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Information. Both were subsequently available again on Tuesday evening.

The Associated Press cited a statement that the cyberattacks occurred in response to “unnatural statements made” by the island’s ruling Al Khalifa family, without going into detail.

Bahrain’s crown prince, Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, opened a summit in the Kingdom last week by calling for a prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel in exchange for an end to the bloodshed.

The Bahraini government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bahrain’s official media did not report on the incident.

In February the group said it had blocked the websites of Bahrain’s international airport, the official news agency and the Chamber of Commerce to mark the 12th anniversary of the Arab Spring uprising in the small Gulf state.

The same shadowy group targeted government sites during last year’s elections, which were boycotted by a banned Shiite opposition group and others.

Bahrain reached a normalization agreement with Israel in 2020, together with the United Arab Emirates.

The kingdom, which is home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has drawn repeated criticism from Iran, its arch-regional rival, over this stance.