US data center strikes in the UAE and Bahrain cause regional cloud outages.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has confirmed that its US data center facilities in the UAE and Bahrain sustained physical damage during drone strikes on March 1, 2026. Two availability zones in the UAE (ME-CENTRAL-1) were directly hit, causing fires and structural damage that took key services like S3 and EC2 offline. This marks a rare instance where a US data center was targeted as part of a physical military conflict, leading to widespread disruptions for banks and apps across the Gulf.
- Direct Hits: Two out of three AWS zones in the UAE were struck; a third zone in Bahrain suffered power failures due to a nearby explosion.
- Service Outage: Major regional services, including Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and Snowflake, reported glitches as cloud capacity dropped by 60%.
- Recovery Time: AWS expects a “prolonged recovery” because water from fire suppression systems damaged delicate server hardware.
- Disaster Recovery: Companies are now being urged to migrate data to AWS regions in Europe or the US to avoid the unpredictable war zone.
👉 Why it matters: This event proves that the “cloud” is not invisible; it is physical infrastructure. When a US data center becomes a military target, it can shut down the digital economy of an entire region in seconds.
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Written and summarized by our editorial team using human review & a bit of AI assistance. Edited & Approved by Debraj Paul, Founder of ArticoliNews Media-Tech