An Afghan street vendor speaks on his phone after telecom and internet services resumed in Kabul, on Wednesday.

Cellphone and internet services were restored in Afghanistan on Wednesday, local residents said, some 48 hours after diplomatic and industry sources said connectivity was abruptly cut on the orders of the Taliban administration.

The cellphone services of Roshan and Etisalat companies, the foreign-owned biggest providers, came back to life in the late afternoon, residents in Kabul and other cities said. Internet access was restored, according to companies providing the service.

A Taliban official from the information department said there were technical reasons for the outage and that services would be quickly restored. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on

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