AWS Data Centres in UAE and Bahrain Hit by Outage After ‘Objects’ Strike Facility

Amazon’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is grappling with significant service disruptions across parts of the Middle East after its data centre in the United Arab Emirates was struck by “objects,” sparking a fire and widespread power issues.

The company confirmed that its cloud regions in both the UAE and Bahrain were affected on Monday, citing localized power and connectivity problems. The disruption comes amid escalating tensions in the Gulf, with Iranian missile and drone strikes reported across the region following U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran.

According to AWS, two availability zones — clusters of data centres designed to ensure redundancy and high availability — in the UAE were left without power. The company disclosed the development through its service status page, where it has been providing updates to customers.

AWS said on Sunday that one zone in the UAE was affected after "objects" struck the data center and created sparks and fire, following which power was shut off.

"We can confirm that a localized power issue has affected another availability zone" in the UAE region, AWS said.

While the timing of the incident has raised questions about whether it was directly linked to ongoing Iranian strikes in neighbouring Gulf states, AWS did not confirm or deny any connection. When asked earlier about the possibility, the company declined to comment on whether the damage resulted from the regional military escalation.

The outages have impacted customers relying on AWS infrastructure for hosting applications, processing transactions, and running enterprise workloads. Although AWS reported partial recovery in parts of the UAE region earlier in the day, it cautioned that complete restoration of services would take considerable time.

The cloud provider has advised customers to shift workloads to alternative regions where possible to minimise disruptions. It also acknowledged that full recovery in both the UAE and Bahrain could take several hours, indicating the scale and complexity of restoring power and connectivity across affected facilities.

The incident underscores the vulnerability of critical digital infrastructure during periods of geopolitical instability. Data centres, often considered resilient due to layered power backups and redundancy systems, can still face risks when physical damage occurs.

In a separate development, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) confirmed that technical issues were affecting some of its digital platforms and mobile app services on Monday. However, it remains unclear whether the bank’s disruption is directly linked to the AWS outage.

The Middle East has become an increasingly important market for cloud computing providers, with businesses, financial institutions, and government agencies depending heavily on digital services. Any prolonged outage in the region could have ripple effects across sectors, from banking and e-commerce to logistics and public services.

As restoration efforts continue, AWS customers in the region are closely monitoring updates, hoping for a swift resolution to one of the most significant cloud disruptions the Gulf has seen in recent years.