Amazon's AWS data center in the UAE experiences outage, possibly linked to Iranian retaliation



Amazon's cloud division

, Amazon Web Services (AWS) , has announced that an object struck a data center in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), causing a fire and temporarily shutting down the power supply. It is believed that the incident may be related to a retaliatory strike following attacks by Israel and the US on Iran.

Amazon's cloud unit reports fire after objects hit UAE data center | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/amazons-cloud-unit-reports-fire-after-objects-hit-uae-data-center-2026-03-01/



AWS UAE suffers AZ outage after 'objects strike data center' and cause fire, amid Iran attacks - DCD
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/aws-uae-outage-after-objects-struck-the-data-center-cause-fire-amid-iran-attacks/

Checking ' Service health ,' which displays AWS's status in real time, reveals that an issue occurred in the 'ME-CENTRAL-1 region' at 4:51 AM Pacific Standard Time on March 1, 2026. A subsequent notification was added at 5:19 AM stating, 'A localized power issue is causing connectivity and power issues to APIs and instances in a single Availability Zone (mec1-az2), and we are currently investigating.' The 'ME-CENTRAL-1 region' refers to the UAE.



At 9:41 AM, AWS announced that there had been an 'object collision' at ME-CENTRAL-1's mec1-az2 data center, resulting in sparks and a fire. Firefighting efforts involved shutting down power to the facility and generators, resulting in a power outage. AWS stated that 'we will safely restore power and connectivity as soon as we receive permission,' but no timeline for when that will happen has been announced.

AWS's announcement did not provide specific details about the 'object collision.' However, the day before AWS announced the incident, on Saturday, February 28, 2026 (local time), Israel and the United States launched attacks against Iran, and the Iranian Ministry of Defense announced that Iran retaliated by launching 137 missiles and 209 drones over the UAE. It is believed that these attacks may have hit the data center, resulting in the outage.

Israel launches preemptive attack on Iran, joint operation with the US - GIGAZINE



Vercel , an American cloud-based PaaS company that uses AWS, CEO Guillermo Rauch said in a post on X, 'AWS availability zone mec1-az2 has been bombed. Vercel is designed to avoid disruptions even if a part of AWS is attacked, so you can still access our services. We hope that the situation will return to normal as soon as possible and that peace will come.' He suggested that the data center incident was caused by a 'bombing.'




Reuters has asked AWS whether the data center incident is related to a retaliatory attack by Iran, but has not received a response at the time of writing.

・Continued
Amazon admits that its AWS data centers in the Middle East were hit by drone attacks, and that operations in the Middle East region remain 'unpredictable' - GIGAZINE



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