Amazon said its Amazon Web Services (AWS) region in Bahrain has been disrupted amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, with the company attributing the outage to drone activity in the area, according to a Reuters report.
An Amazon spokesperson was quoted as saying that the disruption was linked to drone activity near the Bahrain infrastructure.
The company said it was assisting customers in migrating workloads to alternate AWS regions as recovery efforts continue.
Amazon did not provide additional operational specifics but indicated it was working to restore services as soon as possible following the disruption caused by the incident.
EARLIER DRONE STRIKES HAD ALSO HIT UAE, BAHRAIN DATA CENTRES
Earlier incidents had also affected Amazon’s infrastructure in the region.
On March 3, some AWS data centres in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were damaged by drone strikes, disrupting cloud services and making recovery “prolonged."
Two UAE facilities were directly struck, while a drone strike in proximity to a Bahrain facility caused physical damage to infrastructure.
“These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage," AWS said in a status update cited by Reuters at the time.
AWS said it was working to restore full service availability but expected recovery to take longer because of the physical damage involved.
The disruption affected multiple AWS services, with customers advised to back up critical data and shift operations to unaffected AWS regions.
Financial institutions using AWS infrastructure were among those affected by the outage, one person with knowledge of the situation told Reuters at the time.
The incidents marked one of the first known cases of a major US technology company’s data centre operations being disrupted by military activity in the region, raising concerns about the vulnerability of cloud infrastructure to geopolitical conflict.
Amazon said the operating environment in the Middle East remained unpredictable as the conflict continued.
BAHRAIN PUSHES UN RESOLUTION AMID STRAIT OF HORMUZ CONCERNS
Meanwhile, Bahrain has put forward a draft United Nations Security Council resolution that would authorise countries to use “all necessary means" to protect commercial shipping in and around the Strait of Hormuz.
The proposal describes Iran’s actions as a threat to international peace and security and calls on the Islamic Republic to cease attacks on merchant and commercial vessels and avoid interfering with freedom of navigation in the strategic waterway.
The Strait of Hormuz is a key global shipping route carrying about a fifth of global oil supplies, making it critical to international energy markets.
Diplomats told Reuters that the draft resolution was backed by other Gulf Arab states and the United States but was unlikely to pass the Security Council because Russia and China could veto the proposal.
The draft text also expresses readiness to impose measures, including targeted sanctions, and would fall under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, which allows the Security Council to authorise actions ranging from sanctions to the use of force.
Three US officials also told Reuters that 2,500 Marines, along with the USS Boxer amphibious assault ship and accompanying warships, would deploy to the region, although their specific role has not been detailed.
