AWS Middle East Cloud Recovery Could Take Months After Drone Strike Damage

Amazon said on April 30 that restoring AWS cloud operations in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates will take several months, more than two months after drone strikes first damaged the company's data centers in both countries. As of late April, 31 AWS services in the two regions remained disrupted, with several outages tracing back to early March, according to Reuters.

The Details

The damage originated from Iranian drone strikes that hit AWS data centers in Bahrain and the UAE in early March, according to reporting from Reuters and Ars Technica. Amazon advised customers at the time to enact disaster recovery plans, recover from remote backups stored in other AWS regions, and redirect application traffic away from the affected regions, as Network World reported citing an AWS advisory.

AWS updated its status page to acknowledge the scale of the problem directly. "Customers should enact their disaster recovery plans, recover from remote backups stored in other Regions, and update their applications to direct traffic away from the affected Regions," Amazon stated, according to Network World.

The company also suspended billing for the disrupted services. "Relevant billing operations are currently suspended while we restore normal operations," the AWS status update read, as cited by Ars Technica. Amazon had previously waived March 2026 usage-related charges for affected customers in the damaged regions, Ars Technica reported.

AWS CEO Matt Garman addressed the situation publicly in early April, describing the company's response after the initial strikes. "It's a really difficult situation, and we're working incredibly hard. In fact, we have teams, 24/7, working to make sure that we can keep our infrastructure up for our customers in that region," Garman said in remarks reported by CNBC.

As of the week of April 30, Reuters reported that 31 AWS services remained disrupted across Bahrain and the UAE, with some of those service interruptions stretching back to the first week of March. Amazon's April 30 statement confirmed that full restoration is expected to take several more months, Reuters reported.

Careem, a regional ride-hailing and delivery platform, restored service quickly by migrating its workloads overnight to other AWS regions, according to Ars Technica.

Ars Technica characterized the end-to-end disruption window — from the initial March strikes through the expected repair period — as potentially close to half a year.

Context

Network World reported that the Bahrain and UAE facilities suffered a second drone hit as Iran escalated its attacks, complicating early repair efforts and extending the timeline for restoring services.

The disruptions across both regions have persisted since early March, with 31 AWS services still affected as of late April. Amazon has not detailed the specific scope of the physical damage at the affected facilities.

What's Next

Amazon has not disclosed a specific restoration date beyond the "several months" estimate it provided on April 30, Reuters reported. Customers in the affected regions are operating under Amazon's guidance to rely on remote backups and rerouted traffic until the Bahrain and UAE regions are back online.

Billing remains suspended for the affected services during the restoration period, per the AWS status update cited by Ars Technica. Customers who have not yet migrated workloads to other regions face continued service unavailability until Amazon completes the repairs and returns the regional infrastructure to normal operation.