Fire at Amazon Web Services Facility in UAE Disrupts Cloud Services Across Middle East
An Amazon Web Services data centre in the United Arab Emirates caught fire on Sunday, March 1, after unidentified objects struck the facility at approximately 4:30 p.m. local time. The incident triggered a significant disruption to cloud services across the region, marking what analysts say could be the first time a major U.S. technology company’s data centre has been knocked offline by military action.
AWS confirmed via its service status page that one of its availability zones in the ME-CENTRAL-1 region had been “impacted by objects that struck the data center, creating sparks and fire.” The local fire department shut off power to the facility and its backup generators while working to extinguish the blaze. A second availability zone in the same region subsequently experienced what the company described as a “localised power issue.”
The disruption affected multiple core AWS services, including Amazon EC2, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon S3. The company reported significant error rates and elevated latencies across approximately a dozen cloud services. AWS advised customers to enact their disaster recovery plans and recover from remote backups into alternate regions, ideally in Europe.
The fire occurred on the same day that Iran launched waves of missile and drone attacks at Gulf states, including the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials. Amazon has not officially attributed the fire to the Iranian attacks, referring only to “objects” in its public communications. An AWS representative declined to comment further.
The impact extended beyond AWS’s internal operations. Several financial institutions in the UAE reported disruptions to their online banking platforms. Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank confirmed that its platforms and mobile application were unavailable due to what it called a region-wide IT disruption, though it did not directly link the outage to the AWS incident.
AWS estimated that recovery would take at least a day, citing the need to repair facilities, cooling and power systems, coordinate with local authorities, and conduct safety assessments for its operators. The company also reported that a separate availability zone in Bahrain had experienced connectivity and power issues on the same day.
The incident has raised broader questions about the pace of Big Tech’s expansion into the Middle East. U.S. technology companies have been positioning the UAE as a regional hub for artificial intelligence computing. Microsoft announced in November that it plans to bring its total investment in the UAE to $15 billion by the end of 2029. Google and Oracle also operate facilities in the country.
The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies had warned last week that in a compute-driven era, regional adversaries could target data centres, energy infrastructure supporting computing, and fibre chokepoints—in addition to traditional targets like pipelines and refineries.
Amazon operates 123 availability zones across 39 regions globally, with three zones serving the UAE.