Updated 7.10pm

Facebook-owned social networking platforms WhatsApp and Instagram were down in several countries including Malta on Friday evening, with users reporting they were unable to send messages or log in to the platforms. 

Website monitoring site Down Detector reported a spike in outage reports for both platforms starting from around 6.14pm. 

Users in the UK and some other countries also reported problems with accessing Facebook and its Messenger service, although both services remained functional in Malta. 

The outage was quickly fixed, with service restored to both platforms by 7.10pm. The cause of the outage is unknown, with neither company having commented at the time of writing.