Hundreds of US government websites go offline

Hundreds of US government websites were offline on Monday, an AFP review showed, including that of the humanitarian agency USAID which President Donald Trump's administration is shutting down.

From a list of nearly 1,400 federal sites provided by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), more than 350 were unavailable on Monday afternoon (3 February).

These included sites linked to the departments of defense, commerce, energy, transportation, labor as well the Central Intelligence Agency and the Supreme Court, the review showed.

The exact time when the sites became unavailable was not clear. Nor was it known whether the sites were temporarily offline or taken down at the instruction of Trump's administration.

But the development comes amid the administration's controversial drive to radically shrink the US government.

Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive and the world's richest person, is leading Trump's federal cost-cutting efforts under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).