By Ayomide Otitoju
Amazon said late Monday that two of its data centres in the United Arab Emirates were directly struck by drones, disrupting cloud services across parts of the Middle East.
The company also disclosed that a facility in Bahrain sustained damage from a nearby drone strike, according to an update posted on its service dashboard.
“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 said. “These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage.”
The incident comes amid escalating hostilities involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have led to strikes and collateral damage in several Gulf cities.
Amazon did not confirm whether any employees were injured, stating that it was working closely with local authorities and prioritising staff safety during recovery efforts.
Its cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud provider, competes with Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud in delivering infrastructure that powers major applications, websites, and artificial intelligence services.
The company advised customers in affected regions to back up critical data and consider switching operations to alternative Amazon servers globally. On Sunday, Amazon had earlier reported that one of its UAE data centres was struck by unspecified “objects” and cautioned users about potential service disruptions.
