Amazon’s cloud computing division has reported power and connectivity problems at its data centres in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain after unidentified objects struck one facility, triggering sparks and a fire, the company said on Monday. The incident comes amid heightened regional tensions following recent missile and drone strikes in the Middle East.
According to Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of its availability zones in the UAE’s Middle East region was impacted at around 4.30 a.m. PST on Sunday after objects hit the data centre and caused a fire. Local fire crews responded by cutting power to the site while they extinguished the blaze. AWS said the outage caused power shutdowns and connectivity disruption in the affected zone.
The company did not confirm or deny whether the incident was linked to recent Iranian strikes on Gulf states, including the UAE and Bahrain, in response to earlier military actions by the United States and Israel. AWS later reported that another availability zone in the UAE also experienced a localized power issue.
Customers were advised to switch to alternate regions while engineers work to restore service, with full recovery expected to take several hours. AWS has not provided a definitive timeline for when normal operations will resume in the affected locations but said other zones in the region remain operational.
The outage highlights the vulnerability of major cloud infrastructure in volatile geopolitical environments. Cloud services such as AWS host critical services for businesses and governments worldwide, and any disruption can have widespread impacts on digital operations.
Author: Kieran Seymour