Drone Strikes Disrupt Amazon Data Centres, Halting AWS Services in UAE and Bahrain

Amazon Web Services (AWS) said on Monday (March 2) that drone strikes linked to the Middle East conflict damaged data centres in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, disrupting cloud services and making recovery “prolonged.” The incident forced power cuts at a cluster of Amazon facilities in the UAE and knocked out a range of AWS services that clients in the region rely on, including financial institutions.

Direct quote

“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 impact to our infrastructure,” AWS said on its status page. “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. We are working to restore full service availability as quickly as possible, though we expect recovery to be prolonged given the nature of the physical damage involved.”

Context and details

• Reuters reported that Iran fired a barrage of drones and missiles at Gulf states in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday (February 28), an assault that AWS said led to direct impacts on its facilities.
• AWS said earlier that “objects” had triggered a fire on Sunday that forced authorities to cut power to a cluster of Amazon data centres in the UAE; restoration had initially been expected to take at least a day.
• The outage disrupted “a dozen core cloud services,” according to the company, and AWS advised customers to back up critical data and shift operations to servers in unaffected AWS regions.
• The disruption affected financial institutions. A person with direct knowledge told Reuters that financial firms using AWS were hit, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
• Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) said via LinkedIn that its platforms and mobile app were unavailable due to a region-wide IT disruption, although the bank did not directly attribute the outage to AWS.
• AWS warned that the broader operating environment in the Middle East “remains unpredictable” even as it works to restore services.
• Fintech News UAE noted the strike on the UAE facility marked the first time a major US tech company’s data centre was disrupted in the country, a development that raises questions about Big Tech’s regional expansion.

Outlook

AWS said it is working to restore full service availability but expects recovery to be prolonged because of the physical damage and related fire-suppression water damage. The company’s guidance to customers—back up critical data and migrate workloads to unaffected AWS regions—underscores immediate continuity measures while the physical repair and power restoration work continues. With the conflict in the region ongoing and the operating environment described as unpredictable, enterprises in the UAE, Bahrain and neighbouring markets will likely face extended uncertainty around cloud resilience and regional infrastructure risk.