Amazon Says Drones Damaged Three AWS Facilities in UAE and Bahrain

Published: 3 March 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online

Amazon’s cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has confirmed that three of its data centre facilities in the Middle East were damaged by drone and related strikes, highlighting the expanding toll of the ongoing regional conflict. AWS said two of its facilities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were directly hit, and a third facility in Bahrain sustained damage from a nearby strike amid escalating hostilities tied to the US‑Israel conflict with Iran.

According to updates from AWS and internal reports reviewed by industry observers, the strikes caused structural harm, disrupted power delivery and cooling systems, and triggered fire suppression systems that led to water damage inside the facilities. One UAE site saw major structural impacts and flooding, forcing evacuation of staff and a shutdown for safety checks, while another suffered a smaller fire after an indirect strike. The Bahrain facility also experienced service issues due to physical impacts nearby.

The damage has disrupted key AWS cloud services including EC2 compute, S3 storage and DynamoDB database operations, affecting businesses and applications that rely on AWS infrastructure in the region. Amazon has urged customers to back up data and migrate workloads to other AWS regions while recovery and repairs continue.

This development marks one of the first instances where major global technology infrastructure has been physically impacted by regional conflict, with drone and missile activity linked to Iran’s retaliatory attacks after US‑Israel military actions. The broader conflict has already resulted in damage to civilian and commercial infrastructure across the Gulf.

AWS said it is coordinating with local authorities to ensure the safety of personnel and to restore full service availability, but warned that instability in the region means operational disruptions could persist. The incident underscores the vulnerability of cloud computing assets in volatile areas and the potential ripple effects for digital services beyond traditional conflict zones.

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