Amazon Web Services (AWS) disclosed on Tuesday that drone strikes directly hit two of its facilities in the United Arab Emirates.
A third strike in Bahrain damaged critical infrastructure near another site, leading the company to warn customers that recovery will likely be "prolonged" due to the severity of the physical destruction.
The incident underscores the growing vulnerability of digital infrastructure to kinetic warfare.
While cloud providers typically design systems to withstand software failures or localized power outages, the deliberate targeting of data centers represents a significant escalation in the regional crisis that has already destabilized energy markets and maritime trade.
“We are working to restore full service availability as quickly as possible, though we expect recovery to be prolonged given the nature of the physical damage involved,” AWS said in an official update.
The company noted that customers in the region are currently experiencing elevated error rates and degraded service availability.
The fallout from the strikes is being felt across the broader economy.
Oil prices have spiked and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has slowed to a near-halt as blasts continue to be reported in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE.
According to a status update posted at 4:19 a.m. local time in the UAE, two of the company’s three regional data center hubs "remain significantly impaired."
While a third zone remains operational, AWS cautioned that dependencies on the damaged sites have caused indirect performance issues across its remaining local network.
AWS, which operates 123 data center zones across 39 regions globally, has recommended that Middle Eastern clients back up critical data and consider migrating active workloads to alternative regions outside the immediate conflict zone.
The company highlighted the difficulty of the recovery effort in its public statement, noting that "the ongoing conflict in the region means that the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable."
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) declined to provide further comment beyond its published status reports.