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Regions · Middle East and Africa · Explainer · updated 31 Oct 2026
When drones hit the cloud: the AWS data centre attacks in the UAE and Bahrain
What happened to the AWS Middle East regions (me-central-1 in the UAE and me-south-1 in Bahrain), why spreading workloads across availability zones was not enough, which data could not be restored, and what engineers, operators and cloud buyers can learn. Facts only, each linked to AWS's own updates or named reporting.
The AWS logo identifies the company only. CoolPower Index is independent and vendor-neutral.
The attacks in brief
On 1 March 2026 objects struck an AWS data centre in its Middle East (UAE) region, me-central-1, causing sparks and fire. The fire department shut off power to the facility and its generators while it put the fire out.
AWS later confirmed drone strikes: two UAE facilities were directly struck and a strike close to a facility in Bahrain (me-south-1) caused physical damage. Two of the three UAE availability zones were left significantly impaired.
Losing two zones at once broke services built to survive the loss of one. AWS said Amazon S3 is designed to withstand the total loss of a single availability zone, but error rates rose once a second zone failed, and the console and command line were disrupted.
On 30 April AWS said the UAE region could not reliably support customer applications, suspended relevant billing and told customers to migrate. Reuters reported the Bahrain region became unavailable after a second zone there was disrupted in April.
On 15 September AWS said it could not restore resources and data held only in the mec1-az2 zone in the UAE, or held only in the Bahrain region, where damage spanned several zones and exceeded what its multi-zone services are designed to withstand.
Live what happened or the state at the time, from AWS's own status updates.
Confirmed stated or filed by the company, such as AWS's confirmation of the strikes or Amazon's results.
Projected claims and reports from unnamed sources, not confirmed by AWS.
Region
A cloud provider's service area in one geography, such as me-central-1 (UAE). It is not one building.
Availability zone (AZ)
One or more data centres inside a region with their own power, cooling and networking. A region normally has three or more, close enough to work together.
Regional service
A service such as Amazon S3 that spreads data across several zones so it keeps running if one zone fails.
Disaster recovery (DR)
A copy of data and a way to restart workloads somewhere else, usually another region.
Data residency
Rules that require some data to stay inside a country, which can limit where backups may go.
Timeline: March to September 2026
Times are UTC as published by AWS (UTC was the same as UK time in March). Newest last.
1 Mar 2026 · 12:51 UTC Live · Status update
AWS starts investigating issues with services in the UAE region (me-central-1).
AWS says objects struck the data centre, creating sparks and fire. The fire department shut off power to the facility and generators. Customers running redundantly across zones were not affected.
3 Mar 2026 · 00:19 UTC Confirmed · Company statement
AWS confirms drone strikes: two UAE facilities directly struck and a Bahrain facility damaged by a nearby strike, with structural damage, power cut and water damage from fire suppression.
15 Sept 2026 · 10:27 UTC Confirmed · Company statement
AWS says it cannot restore resources and data held only in mec1-az2, or held only in the Bahrain region. It is replacing infrastructure in the UAE and will update on Bahrain in early 2027.
UAE region (me-central-1): availability zones AWS reported as impaired, update by update (of 3) Live · Status updates
Interactive chart loads here. The figures are also in the table below.
Each bar is one AWS Health Dashboard update, times in UTC (the same as UK time in March). From 3 March AWS moved detailed updates to customers' own Personal Health Dashboards, so the public record thins out after that. Red bars: two of three zones down, beyond what a single-zone failure design covers.
A picture of what AWS has said about each zone. Status as of AWS's 15 September 2026 update, the latest public one we found on 31 October 2026.
Middle East (UAE) me-central-1
Opened 2022.
mec1-az1Kept operating (Operating)Operated normally, though some services were hit through dependencies on the other zones (AWS, 3 March).
mec1-az2Struck, data not restorable (Lost or not restorable)Struck on 1 March. On 15 September AWS said it cannot restore resources and data held only in this zone.
mec1-az3Impaired (Impaired)Lost power on 2 March. AWS is still working on recovering resources here (15 September).
AWS says it is replacing the affected infrastructure and will update on restoring services in the coming months (15 September 2026).
Middle East (Bahrain) me-south-1
Opened 2019.
Zone ADamaged, March (Lost or not restorable)A drone strike close to one facility caused physical damage (AWS, 3 March).
Zone BDisrupted, April (Lost or not restorable)Reuters reported the region became unavailable after disruption to a second zone in April.
RegionRegion-only data not restorable (Lost or not restorable)Damage spanned several zones and exceeded what regional and multi-zone services are designed to withstand (AWS, 15 September).
AWS says it will give a further update on Bahrain in early 2027 (15 September 2026). Zone names here are ours: AWS did not name the Bahrain zones in its public updates.
Standby generators did not keep the zone running: the fire department shut off power to the facility and its generators while fighting the fire, and AWS then had to wait for permission to switch power back on.
AWS said recovery required repair of facilities, cooling and power systems, as well as coordination with local authorities and safety checks for its staff.
Regional services such as S3 and DynamoDB depend on several zones. When two zones failed, services in the surviving zone were hit too, and the console and command line were disrupted.
Our analysis, based on AWS's own updates and the reporting cited on this page. It is not advice for any particular system.
Data held in one zone or one region only was the data that was lost. AWS's own updates repeated the same advice: back up to, and be able to restore into, another region.
Availability zones protect against a single facility failing. InfoQ notes that zones in a region sit within roughly 100 km of each other, which does not protect against an attacker who can reach several of them.
On-site backup power does not help if the emergency services isolate the building. For engineers this is a design and site-selection question as much as an equipment one.
Data residency rules can stop a copy leaving the country. InfoQ reports a T-Systems cloud architect warned in March that moving workloads in a crisis can push sensitive data across borders, so this belongs in a risk register.
Decide the fallback region before you need it. AWS suggested US, European or Asia Pacific regions depending on latency and data residency needs.
A quick check for your own estate: is anything held in one zone or one region only? Are backups copied to another region and has a restore been tested? Do residency rules allow a copy abroad? Is the fallback region chosen?
Did it show in AWS's results?
Not investment advice. Figures are Amazon's filed segment results and a company forecast with its date. We make no forecasts or recommendations.
AWS quarterly sales and operating income, Q2 2025 to Q3 2026 (US$bn) Filed
Interactive chart loads here. The figures are also in the table below.
Amazon's AWS segment figures from its Q3 2026 results (SEC Form 8-K, exhibit 99.1, filed 29 October 2026). Sales and operating income are both in US dollars, so they share one axis. Amazon does not report results by AWS region, so the UAE and Bahrain regions cannot be seen in these numbers. The strikes came in Q1 2026.
Our commentary (not advice): AWS sales kept rising through and after the strike quarter, from US$35.6bn in Q4 2025 to US$37.6bn in Q1 2026 and US$46bn in Q3 2026. Amazon does not report results by region, so the cost of the Middle East outages, including suspended billing in the UAE region, cannot be read from these figures. More AWS figures: Markets & Investment.
Common questions
Were AWS data centres attacked in the UAE?
Yes. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the biggest cloud company, said drones hit two of its data centres in the UAE in early March 2026, and a strike nearby damaged one in Bahrain.
Why it matters A data centre is a building full of computers that runs apps and websites, so damage there is felt by every online service inside it.
2 UAE data centres hit directly
1 Bahrain site damaged by a nearby strike
Early March 2026
Source: AWS service updates
Is the AWS UAE region (me-central-1) working again?
Not fully. AWS says its UAE cloud region still cannot reliably run customer apps, and some data cannot be recovered.
AWS warning: 30 April 2026
Lost-data update: 15 September 2026
2 of its 3 zones still being recovered
Source: AWS service updates
What happened to the AWS Bahrain region (me-south-1)?
It stopped working. One building was damaged in March and the region went down after a second zone failed in April.
Why it matters AWS says data stored only in Bahrain cannot be brought back.
Damage: March 2026
Outage after a second zone failed: April 2026
Next AWS update: early 2027
Source: AWS, Reuters
Did customers lose data?
Some did. Customers who kept their only copy in the damaged UAE zone or only in Bahrain lost access to it.
Why it matters It is like keeping your only photo album in one house. Most customers had backups elsewhere and carried on.
AWS update: 15 September 2026
Source: AWS service updates
Why did multi-AZ not protect everyone?
A cloud region is split into separate buildings called availability zones, so one can fail without taking the service down. Here more than one zone was hit.
Why it matters Keeping copies in two buildings protects you from a fire in one, not from damage to both.
Source: AWS service updates
What does this mean for data centres in the Gulf?
Physical safety now matters alongside power and cooling. The UAE is reported to be spreading its big AI campus over more sites.
Planned UAE AI campus: around 5 GW (a gigawatt is a thousand megawatts of power)
Source: Reuters
Coverage limits: this page relies on AWS's public status updates (the 3 March update moved detail to customers' private dashboards), Amazon's filings and named news reports. It does not attribute the attacks beyond what the sources say, and it does not cover other providers' facilities. Times are as published. Flags: flag-icons (MIT licence). Charts: Apache ECharts (Apache 2.0). This is not investment advice. Related: Middle East and Africa data centres · Cloud regions · Markets & Investment · Energy supply pathways.
When drones hit the cloud: the AWS data centre attacks in the UAE and Bahrain
Middle East (UAE)