Amazon says drone strikes damaged 3 facilities in UAE and Bahrain
People walk past the Amazon Web Services (AWS) exhibit at the National Retail Federation (NRF) 2026: Retail’s Big Show on January 12, 2026 in New York City, USA.
Kylie Cooper | Reuters
Amazon Web Services said late Monday that two data centers in the United Arab Emirates and a facility in Bahrain were damaged by drone attacks and the facilities were offline.
The incident occurred on Sunday morning, with the announcement made by the company on its own account. AWS health dashboard at the time “objects” crashed into data centers in the UAE, causing “sparks and fire”. The company also said it was investigating power and connectivity issues at a facility in Bahrain.
The company’s last update at 7:19 PM EST acknowledged that the outages were due to drone strikes linked to the “ongoing conflict in the Middle East.”
“Two of our facilities were directly hit in the UAE, while a drone strike near one of our facilities in Bahrain caused physical impacts to our infrastructure,” AWS said. he said. “These attacks caused structural damage, disrupted the distribution of electricity to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage.”
AWS said it was working to quickly restore service in the region but expected the recovery to take longer “given the nature of the physical damage associated.” The company said it would share an update on the situation by midnight or earlier if new information becomes available.
AWS said it is working to repair physical damage to its data centers while also restoring data access and service availability in affected areas that do not require bringing facilities fully back online.
AWS warned that instability in the Middle East was likely to continue, making operations “unpredictable”.
He said customers with workloads in the region should consider taking steps to mitigate the effects of the conflict, including backing up their data or potentially moving workloads to other AWS regions.
Earlier Monday, Amazon warned customers about delivery delays in the Middle East as Iran targets the region with missiles and drones in response to US-Israeli attacks.
It added notifications at the top of its marketplaces in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE, warning customers that “delivery times in your area will be extended.”
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