MAR 3 – Amazon’s cloud computing business says drones have hit three of its facilities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain following US and Israeli strikes against Iran at the weekend.
The incidents occurred on Sunday morning, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) saying at the time that ”objects” had hit a data centre in the UAE, creating ”sparks and fire”. Also on Sunday, AWS said it was investigating power and connectivity issues at a facility in Bahrain.
On Monday, the company confirmed that drone strikes had caused the outages.
The incidents highlight the vulnerability of key technology infrastructure like data centres during military conflicts.
AWS said two UAE facilities were hit directly, ”while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities caused physical impacts to our infrastructure.”
The company said the drones caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to infrastructure, ”and in some cases, required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage.”
The firm added that it is working quickly to restore services to the affected areas, but that it could take time ”given the nature of the physical damage involved.”
It also recommended that customers who use its services in the region back up their data and “potentially migrate workloads” to alternative AWS facilities in the rest of the world.
AWS also warned that the ongoing conflict means “the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable.”
President Donald Trump has signalled that the US strikes on Iran could last four to five weeks but could “go far longer”.
Iran has been launching waves of missiles and drones against US bases and allies around the region, including in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
