Drone strikes damage Amazon data centres in UAE and Bahrain

Amazon Web Services has confirmed that drone strikes damaged multiple data centre facilities in the Middle East, causing major service disruptions across its UAE and Bahrain regions.

According to AWS service updates, two facilities in the UAE were directly struck, while a drone strike near a facility in Bahrain caused physical damage. The company said the strikes resulted in structural damage, disrupted power delivery, and in some cases required fire suppression that led to additional water damage.

"Due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, both affected regions have experienced physical impacts to infrastructure as a result of drone strikes," Amazon said in the official update.

As per the latest update, two of three Availability Zones in the UAE region remain significantly impaired. Customers are facing elevated error rates across multiple services, including EC2, S3, and DynamoDB.

AWS said recovery will be prolonged given the physical damage. The company advised affected users to back up critical data and migrate workloads to other regions, noting that "the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable." It did not specify if any employees were injured.