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Amazon Cloud Faces Months-Long Repair After Middle East Data Center Attacks
1 May
Summary
- Amazon data centers in UAE and Bahrain damaged by conflict.
- Full recovery expected to take several months, impacting operations.
- Customers urged to migrate resources and use remote backups.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is facing a prolonged recovery period for its cloud regions in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which sustained damage from Iranian drone strikes in early March 2026. As of April 30, 2026, the ME-CENTRAL-1 and ME-SOUTH-1 regions remain unable to support customer applications. The company estimates that restoring normal operations will require several additional months.
To mitigate the impact, AWS has strongly recommended that customers migrate their resources to alternative cloud regions and implement remote backups for inaccessible data. Some clients, like the Dubai-based super app Careem, successfully migrated their operations overnight to other data center servers.
Amazon has waived all usage-related charges for March 2026 for affected customers, an estimated cost of $150 million. Billing operations in the damaged regions are currently suspended until normal service is resumed.
