Pacman database files replaced with html files

[pebcak]

There is a recent and yet unresolved thread with similar issue:

Question about pacman error message

I’m hoping this awesome forum can help because I’m really freaking out right now. I tried to update with pacman in the terminal like I always do and I get this error message: :: Starting full system upgrade… error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/core.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/extra.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/sync/community.db: Unrecognized archive format error: could not open file…

There is a rather old but solved thread at:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=135310