Drone Strikes Damage Amazon Web Services Data Centres in UAE, Bahrain, Causing Outages

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Manama: Two data centres operated by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the United Arab Emirates were directly struck by drones, while a facility in Bahrain was damaged by a nearby strike, forcing services offline amid escalating regional tensions.

The incident occurred Sunday morning, according to updates posted on the AWS health dashboard. Initial reports described “objects” hitting facilities in the UAE, causing sparks and fire. The company later confirmed that the disruptions were the result of drone strikes linked to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

In its latest update, AWS said two UAE facilities sustained direct hits, while in Bahrain a drone strike in close proximity caused physical damage to infrastructure. The attacks resulted in structural damage, power disruptions and, in some cases, fire suppression efforts that led to additional water damage.

The outages affected several core AWS services, including Amazon EC2, Amazon S3 and Amazon DynamoDB, with customers experiencing elevated error rates and degraded availability.

AWS said it is working to restore services as quickly as possible but warned that recovery may be prolonged given the extent of the physical damage. The company added that it is coordinating with local authorities and prioritizing the safety of its personnel during recovery operations.

While repairs are underway, AWS said it is also attempting to restore data access and service availability in affected regions without waiting for full restoration of the damaged facilities.

The company cautioned that continued instability in the Middle East could make operations unpredictable and advised customers to take precautionary steps, including backing up data or migrating workloads to other AWS regions.

Separately, Amazon earlier warned customers of potential delivery delays across parts of the Middle East, adding notices to its marketplaces in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE citing extended delivery times amid ongoing missile and drone activity in the region.