Government websites went offline on Monday evening, apparently due to a water leak at the finance ministry, where the servers are located and were subsequently turned off.

The websites of ministries, departments and semi-government organisations were temporarily down until the problem is resolved, junior minister for Research, Innovation and Digital Policy minister Philippos Hadjizacharia posted on social media.

Contacted by the Cyprus Mail, the minister said that water pipes had burst in the finance ministry building, resulting in water leaking into the IT center hosting the government servers.

The servers were shut down as a precaution to prevent further damage until the problem is fixed, he added.

Work was currently underway to repair the damage and get the websites back up and running.

When contacted, Hadjizacharia was on his way from Larnaca to the finance ministry to personally inspect the situation.

It’s understood the servers went down around 6.30pm.