Albania suffered a new cyber attack on Friday night that disabled the border police’s data recording and monitoring system, Prime Minister Edi Rama announced on Saturday, blaming the new aggression on the Iranian regime. reports Agerpres.

This new cyber attack comes just two days after Albania severed diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran, after Rama on Wednesday accused the Islamist regime of “organizing and financing” the attack, which brought down digital services and websites in July last year.

Albanian police were forced to manually log data on Saturday to ease the transit of passengers entering and leaving the country, causing kilometers-long queues of cars at border crossings and long delays and traffic jams at Tirana’s Mother Teresa International Airport.

On Friday, the United States announced sanctions against Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security and its head, Esmail Khatib, who is accused of carrying out several cyber attacks against the United States and its allies, including against the government of Albania last July.

On Thursday, NATO also accused Iran of a cyber attack on the Balkan country and warned that it was ready to adopt a “collective response” to contain cyber threats.

Several thousand Iranian dissidents live in Albania

Albania is home to a group of around 3,000 Iranian dissidents from the opposition People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran, known as the MEK, which has repeatedly led to tensions between the two countries.

These Iranian exiles, who oppose the regime in Tehran, began arriving in Albania in 2013 after the country accepted them on “humanitarian” grounds at the request of the United States.