Drone Strikes Disrupt AWS Services in UAE and Bahrain, Impacting 109 Services
In early March 2026, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced significant service disruptions in the Middle East following drone strikes on its data centers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. These attacks led to structural damage, power outages, and widespread service impairments, affecting numerous businesses and government operations across the region.
Incident Overview
The disruptions began on March 1, 2026, at approximately 4:30 AM PST, when AWS’s Availability Zone mec1-az2 in the UAE was struck by unidentified objects, causing sparks and a fire within the facility. Local fire departments responded by shutting off power to the data center and its generators to contain the blaze. Initially, AWS described the event as a localized power issue, but by March 2, the company confirmed that two facilities in the UAE’s ME-CENTRAL-1 region had been directly hit by drone attacks. Additionally, a facility in Bahrain’s ME-SOUTH-1 region sustained damage from a nearby strike. AWS attributed these incidents to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. ([cybersecuritynews.com](https://cybersecuritynews.com/aws-middle-east-services-disrupted/?utm_source=openai))
Impact on AWS Services
The attacks caused extensive structural damage, disrupted power delivery, and, in some cases, triggered fire suppression systems, resulting in additional water damage. As a result, 109 AWS services were affected across the ME-CENTRAL-1 region:
– 25 services were fully disrupted, including:
– Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service): Experienced high failure rates for data operations.
– Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): Instance launches were throttled region-wide.
– Amazon DynamoDB: Faced elevated error rates and read/write failures.
– AWS Lambda: Dependent on S3 and DynamoDB recovery, leading to service disruptions.
– Amazon Kinesis: Affected due to foundational service failures.
– Amazon CloudWatch: Monitoring services were degraded.
– Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service): Database availability was impaired.
– AWS Management Console: Partially operational with persistent page errors.
– 34 services experienced degraded performance, and
– 50 services were impacted to varying degrees.
The simultaneous impairment of two out of three Availability Zones in the UAE overwhelmed AWS’s regional redundancy mechanisms, leading to high failure rates for data operations and other critical services. ([cybersecuritynews.com](https://cybersecuritynews.com/aws-middle-east-services-disrupted/?utm_source=openai))
Broader Implications
The service disruptions had a cascading effect on various sectors:
– Financial Institutions: Major UAE banks, including Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, reported outages affecting mobile applications and phone banking services. Customers experienced intermittent connectivity issues and degraded performance when accessing banking platforms. ([thenationalnews.com](https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/2026/03/03/drone-strikes-damage-amazon-data-centres-in-uae-and-bahrain-disrupting-services/?utm_source=openai))
– Consumer Services: Ride-hailing and delivery platform Careem reported disruptions linked to the AWS outage. CEO Mudassir Sheikha stated that the company’s Rides and Hala services were impacted but restored after teams executed an overnight cross-regional infrastructure migration. ([wired.me](https://www.wired.me/story/when-iranian-drones-hit-the-cloud-aws-data-centres-damaged-in-the-gulf?utm_source=openai))
– Government Operations: With AWS hosting a significant portion of government data, the outages raised concerns about the resilience of public sector digital services. While specific government service disruptions were not confirmed, the incident underscored the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to physical attacks. ([wired.me](https://www.wired.me/story/when-iranian-drones-hit-the-cloud-aws-data-centres-damaged-in-the-gulf?utm_source=openai))
AWS’s Response and Recovery Efforts
AWS initiated parallel recovery efforts focusing on both physical restoration and software-based mitigations:
– Physical Restoration: AWS worked closely with local authorities to assess the damage and restore power to the affected facilities. The company prioritized staff safety during recovery operations and anticipated that full restoration would be gradual due to the scale of the physical damage. ([thenationalnews.com](https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/2026/03/03/drone-strikes-damage-amazon-data-centres-in-uae-and-bahrain-disrupting-services/?utm_source=openai))
– Software-Based Mitigations: AWS deployed updates to enable services like Amazon S3 to operate within degraded infrastructure constraints. Efforts were also made to remediate impaired DynamoDB tables to restore read/write availability for downstream services. By March 3, AWS reported improvements in S3 operations, with newly written objects retrievable, though some services remained dependent on physical infrastructure restoration. ([cybersecuritynews.com](https://cybersecuritynews.com/aws-middle-east-services-disrupted/?utm_source=openai))
Customer Advisory
AWS strongly advised customers to activate their disaster recovery plans, restore from remote backups in other regions, and redirect application traffic away from the ME-CENTRAL-1 region. Recommended alternate regions included AWS deployments in the US, Europe, or Asia Pacific. The company emphasized the importance of geographic redundancy to mitigate the impact of such incidents. ([cybersecuritynews.com](https://cybersecuritynews.com/aws-middle-east-services-disrupted/?utm_source=openai))
Conclusion
The drone strikes on AWS data centers in the UAE and Bahrain highlight the vulnerability of cloud infrastructure to physical attacks, especially in conflict-prone regions. The incident underscores the critical need for robust disaster recovery plans and the importance of geographic redundancy in cloud deployments. As AWS continues its recovery efforts, businesses and government entities are reminded of the importance of resilience and preparedness in the face of unforeseen disruptions.
