The free messaging app-WhatsApp has broke down—leaving several users hanging, unable to send or receive messages.

With the New Year at the corner for most countries where WhatsApp is popularly, this is a great inconvenience as many people rely on the messaging system to reach out to their loved ones.

The real cause of the outage is unknown— the mobile messaging application reportedly began experiencing issues with its service in parts of Europe after it went down shortly after 4.30pm.

According to UK’s Independent;

WhatsApp has broken, leaving people unable to send or receive texts through one of the world’s most popular messaging apps.

It wasn’t clear what caused the problems, which began shortly after 4.30PM UK time. Reports of issues surged after that, according to website DownDetector.

The problems were primarily focused in the UK and Western Europe, according to DownDetector, though it isn’t clear whether the issues or just the reports were located there.

The issues began just as the night of New Years Eve was beginning, for many around the world, likely being one of the most busy nights for the service. It also came at the end of a day of high-profile outages, which began with problems at the BBC in the morning.