Iranian drone strikes hit Amazon data centers in Gulf, disrupting cloud services

Iranian drone strikes hit three Amazon data centre facilities in the UAE and Bahrain this week, disrupting cloud services across parts of the Middle East as regional tensions escalate.

Amazon said two data centers in the UAE were “directly struck” by drones, while a facility in Bahrain sustained damage from what it described as “a drone strike in close proximity.” The company confirmed roughly 60 Amazon Web Services (AWS) services in the region were disrupted, affecting web traffic and cloud-dependent businesses.

The attacks came as Iran launched strikes against the UAE and other neighboring countries following a major assault by U.S. and Israeli forces that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior Iranian officials over the weekend. According to the reports, Iran’s response extended beyond U.S. military bases to airports, hotels, and key oil and gas infrastructure.

“Due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, both affected regions have experienced physical impacts to infrastructure as a result of drone strikes,” Amazon stated.

According to the company, the attacks caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery, and triggered fire suppression systems causing additional water damage inside the facilities. Local fire departments shut off power and generators while extinguishing fires sparked by debris that struck the sites.

Amazon did not say whether any employees were injured. The company said it is working with local authorities and prioritizing staff safety as recovery efforts continue. Amazon advised customers in the Middle East to back up critical data and migrate applications to other AWS regions.

“Full recovery will depend on restoring the affected infrastructure, which our teams continue to work toward,” the company said on Tuesday, adding that the broader operating environment in the region remains unpredictable due to the ongoing conflict.

Amazon first disclosed service interruptions earlier this week, initially attributing the outage to connectivity and power issues before confirming that its facilities had been physically struck by drones.

Amazon operates multiple “availability zones” within each region — physically separate data centers with independent power, networking, and cooling systems that are linked by high-speed connections. The design allows customers to distribute workloads across sites so services can continue operating if one facility is disrupted. In the United Arab Emirates, two of the three availability zones were struck, while in Bahrain, one zone suffered a prolonged power outage and ongoing connectivity problems, further disrupting service across the Gulf.