Amazon Confirms Irrecoverable Data Loss in UAE and Bahrain Data Centers After Drone Attacks
Amazon Web Services has confirmed the permanent loss of customer data following physical attacks on its data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The incidents, attributed to Iranian drone strikes, began on March 1 and extended into April and July, affecting facilities involved in artificial intelligence projects.
After six months of recovery efforts, AWS issued an official statement on September 15, 2026, acknowledging that data in certain availability zones could not be restored. The company had previously released only interim technical reports without confirming total loss.
Impact on UAE Region mec1
The UAE region consists of three zones: mec1-az1, mec1-az2, and mec1-az3. According to the AWS Health Dashboard:
- mec1-az1 sustained no physical damage and operates normally, though it faces overload issues.
- mec1-az2 was completely destroyed with no possibility of data recovery, as it lacked backups outside the zone. All customer data stored exclusively on disks in this zone is irretrievably lost.
- mec1-az3 suffered serious damage, but engineers continue attempts to recover infrastructure and surviving data.
The affected UAE project, linked to an OpenAI lease, had its contract suspended following the attacks.
Bahrain Region me-south-1 Status
In Bahrain, the situation proved more severe. All three zones — mes1-az1, mes1-az2, and mes1-az3 — that form the me-south-1 region were completely taken offline with no recovery options reported.
AWS has recommended that customers relocate workloads to other unaffected regions to mitigate further risks.
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