Two Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were directly struck and damaged by drones on March 1, 2026, causing fires and power disruptions. The affected facilities are part of the me-central-1 region, with specific impact to the mec1-az2 availability zone, with reports indicating incidents occurred in the Dubai area.
Data centers operated by Amazon Web Services in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were damaged by drone strikes amid the ongoing Middle East conflict, disrupting cloud services and leading to what the company described as a prolonged recovery process.
Amazon.com said on Monday that some of its facilities in the UAE and Bahrain were hit. The damage followed a wave of drones and missiles launched by Iran in response to U.S. and Israeli strikes that reportedly killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday.
The strike on the UAE site marks the first known case of a major U.S. technology company’s data center being disrupted by direct military action. The incident has raised concerns about the rapid expansion of major tech firms in the region.
In a status update, AWS said two of its facilities in the UAE were directly struck. In Bahrain, a drone strike near one of its facilities caused physical damage to infrastructure. The company said the attacks led to structural damage, power supply disruptions, and fire suppression efforts that caused additional water damage.
“We are working to restore full service as quickly as possible, but recovery may take time due to the extent of the physical damage,” AWS said. Earlier, the company had reported that unidentified “objects” triggered a fire on Sunday, forcing authorities to cut power to a group of Amazon data centers in the UAE. Restoration was expected to take at least a day.
A source told Reuters that financial institutions relying on AWS services were affected by the outage, though the person requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
AWS also warned that the continuing conflict in the region makes the overall operating environment in the Middle East unpredictable.
The UAE has been developing itself as a regional hub for artificial intelligence computing, which supports services such as ChatGPT. Microsoft said in November it plans to increase its total investment in the UAE to $15 billion by 2029 and will use chips from Nvidia in its data centers there.
Last week, the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies warned that in the digital age, conflicts could expand beyond oil facilities to include data centers, power infrastructure, and fiber networks.
Google and Oracle Corporation, which also operate facilities in the UAE, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle build out regional data center and AI infrastructure
The AWS outage disrupted about a dozen key cloud services. The company advised customers to back up important data and move operations to unaffected AWS regions. Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank said its platforms and mobile app were unavailable due to a region-wide IT disruption, though it did not directly link the issue to the AWS incident.
Source: reuters Edited By Bernie
