By adx
As the conflict between Iran and the United States escalates across the Middle East, a major cloud infrastructure facility in the United Arab Emirates operated by Amazon’s cloud division was struck and caught fire, highlighting the growing spillover of the war into civilian and commercial technology assets.
Drone and missile barrages launched by Iran in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli military strikes have targeted infrastructure across the Gulf in recent days, part of a wider regional confrontation that has drawn in multiple states.
On Sunday, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centre in the UAE’s ME‑CENTRAL‑1 cloud region was hit by unidentified projectiles, causing sparks and a blaze that forced emergency crews to cut power, AWS said in a status update.
Initial reports shared by the company said the resulting fire led to a temporary outage as fire crews worked to extinguish the flames and authorities shut off electrical supplies to the site.
The data centre outage comes amid intense strike and counterstrike operations between Iranian forces and a U.S.–Israeli coalition, which began after a series of air attacks on Iranian military and leadership targets earlier last week.
Tehran responded with waves of drones and missiles aimed at allied partner states, including those in the Gulf, elevating fears that the war could widen beyond conventional battlefields.
Iranian forces have launched hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles and ballistic missiles at UAE territory, according to open conflict tracking, with most intercepted but some falling in populated areas and causing fires or infrastructure damage.
The AWS data centre’s location in Abu Dhabi places it within reach of these wider hostilities.
Besides the UAE site, AWS also reported localized power and connectivity issues at a facility in Bahrain that were likely linked to the region’s heightened tensions.
Industry analysts say the incident marks one of the first times major Western cloud infrastructure has been physically affected by the conflict in the Middle East, underscoring risks that extend beyond traditional energy and logistics targets.