All phone and internet services on Shetland have been restored after two underwater telecommunications cables were damaged.

A break in the line connecting Shetland to mainland Scotland in the early hours of Thursday meant that residents were left without broadband and phone services.

Police Scotland declared the situation a major incident and sent extra resources to the island should residents need to contact emergency services.

A second subsea cable connecting Shetland and the Faroe Islands was damaged last week.

BT Group, which provides communications services through the cables, said both lines are still being repaired, but engineers, who have been working “flat out”, were able to reconnect all services via a temporary solution on Thursday afternoon.

A spokesperson for the company said: “Further testing and monitoring overnight has shown that broadband services have remained stable, and we will continue to monitor this.

“As a precaution, we have specialist teams in Shetland with satellite backup links should either of the subsea cables fail while they are being repaired.”

Cable operator Faroese Telecom expect repair to the first damaged cable to be completed by this weekend.

The second damaged cable, impacting Shetland, will then be examined by specialist subsea engineers and is expected to be repaired next week.

It is understood the breaks were likely caused by a fishing vessel.

Faeroese Telecom’s head of infrastructure, Pall Vesturbu, told the BBC: “We have reason to believe that the cable was damaged by a fishing vessel.

“There was also an incident last week, and we also believe that this was caused by a fishing vessel.”

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described the situation as “very serious” for Shetland and confirmed the Scottish government’s resilience committee met to ensure necessary support was provided.