Drone Strikes Hit AWS Sites in UAE and Bahrain
Amazon Web Services says drone strikes damaged three of its data center facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain over the weekend, knocking critical infrastructure offline as the conflict intensifies across the Middle East.
The strikes happened early on Sunday, shortly after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran triggered retaliatory missile and drone attacks across the region.
AWS initially reported that “objects” struck a data center in the UAE, causing “sparks and fire.” Fire crews shut down power at the site while they worked to contain the blaze. At the time, the company also said it was looking into power and connectivity issues at a facility in Bahrain.
By Monday evening, AWS confirmed the outages were the result of drone strikes tied to the “ongoing conflict in the Middle East.”
“In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly struck, while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities caused physical impacts to our infrastructure,” AWS said. “These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage.”
According to the company, it may take time to bring systems fully back online “given the nature of the physical damage involved.” While repairs continue, AWS said it is also working to restore data access and service in ways that don’t require the buildings to be fully operational.
Some of its major services, including EC2 virtual servers, S3 storage and DynamoDB databases, saw higher error rates and limited availability following the strikes.
The company has advised customers operating in the region to back up their data and consider moving workloads to other AWS regions around the world. It also warned that “the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable.”
In a separate notice, Amazon has alerted customers in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE about possible shipping delays, posting messages about an “extended delivery time in your area” on its regional marketplaces.
President Donald Trump has indicated that U.S. military operations against Iran could continue for weeks and potentially longer, raising concerns that further instability could affect businesses and infrastructure throughout the region.
