( CNN ) -- Syria 's two-day Internet blackout was `` a mental war '' inflicted by the government , an opposition activist said Sunday as service to the country was largely restored . `` So far , all areas that had Internet service before Thursday are connected , '' said Alexia Jade , a spokeswoman for the opposition Damascus Media Office . While Internet access is back , theories and concerns abound on what caused the outage . It also sparked fears that the government is stepping up efforts to quash the uprising by crushing the flow of information and isolating the country from the outside world . `` It appears to be back to normal , but it is impossible to tell if filtering or monitoring technology was installed during the outage , '' said Matthew Prince , CEO of CloudFlare , an Internet security company . Global monitors said the country lost contact with the Web on Thursday , plunging into an Internet black hole . Syria 's information minister said `` terrorists '' cut the cable , knocking out Web communication with other countries . The government uses the word `` terrorists '' to refer to rebels in the ongoing civil war , and blamed them for a car bombing near a mosque in Homs that killed 15 people and wounded 24 others Sunday . Syria caused Internet blackout , security firm says . According to state-run media , a car bomb in Barzeh killed three people . Syrian TV also showed graphic pictures of bodies in a field and reported 21 rebels were killed as they tried to smuggle weapons into Talkalakh , a town near the border with Lebanon . The military also carried out operations in Aleppo , state-run media said . At least eight rebels died in Aleppo when they were bombed by warplanes as they attacked Syrian military positions , the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said . The group claimed the Syrian military also bombed targets in Damascus and Reef al-Raqqa . The opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria said at least 173 people were found dead in Syria on Sunday . More than 42,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict since the uprising began in March 2011 , according to opposition activists . CNN can not confirm claims by the government or the opposition because of government restrictions that prevent journalists from reporting freely within Syria . During the Syrian rebellion , anti-government fighters have routinely used the Web to transmit bloody images , including what they say are military attacks on civilians . Rebel leaders accused the government of creating the blackout to hide its mass killings from the outside world . `` The regime knows that Internet is the main communication method for us , '' Jade said . `` Taking that down is almost like blinding the normal Internet users related to the revolution . '' Opposition : Fierce fighting closes Damascus airport for second day . Internet and cell phone coverage were restored Saturday to most Syrian provinces , according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights . The same day , state media reported the Internet and communications lines were back in service in Damascus and its suburbs , blaming the outage on a malfunction in the main grid . A Web security expert said the outage was almost certainly the work of the Syrian government . Prince said his firm 's investigations showed that all four Internet cables linking Syria to the outside world would have had to been cut simultaneously for a whole country outage to occur . As winter nears in Syria , people are being forced back to restive neighborhoods . Al-Sakhour is on the frontlines of the Syrian civil war and is the last place most civilians want to be . But the streets are getting cold , and people are low on cash . So going home was the only option for about one-third of the residents of this Aleppo community and others nearby . For the children , gunfire is so frequent it has become background noise . One 12-year-old girl tells CNN Senior International Correspondent Arwa Damon that she hardly notices anymore . Some children even collect the shell casings they find in the streets . The Syrian military wants to retake al-Sakhour because a road important to the insurgents runs through the neighborhood , which was one of the first to be controlled by rebels . It is now a bloody battle for the streets and one vital road to Aleppo airport . There are bodies on the roads . People try to retrieve them , only to be shot at by snipers . There are other dangers . One father shows his right arm , which he says was shot as he shielded one of his daughters at a checkpoint . A woman pulls Damon aside and grimly tells her `` I 'd rather die than live like this . '' CNN 's Arwa Damon , Salma Abdelaziz , Faith Karimi , Samira Said and Laura Smith-Spark contributed to this report .
NEW : Woman tells man she would rather die than live in war - torn country . ` ` So far , all homes that had Internet service before Thursday are connected , '' opposition says . The attack sparks fears that the government is stepping up efforts to suppress the uprising . The government has blamed ` ` terrorists '' for the attack .