Amazon Web Services has confirmed the permanent loss of customer data and resources stored across its Middle East infrastructure following military strikes earlier this year.
According to updates posted by AWS on September 15, the company is unable to recover data hosted in the Middle East Bahrain region, designated as me-south-1, as well as specific zones within the Middle East UAE region, known as me-central-1. The destruction follows a series of drone attacks launched by Iran in early March in retaliation for a joint US-Israeli military campaign against the country.
In the UAE, the damage is isolated to one availability zone. AWS stated that it remains “unable to restore access to the resources and data hosted exclusively in mec1-az2,” while restoration efforts continue across the remaining two availability zones and shared regional infrastructure.
The impact in Bahrain is more severe, affecting multiple availability zones and exceeding the disaster recovery thresholds of the regional architecture. AWS noted that it is “unable to restore access to the resources and data hosted exclusively in this Region,” with further updates for Bahrain customers scheduled for early 2027.
AWS reported that structural damage, disrupted power delivery, and water damage from fire suppression activities compromised the facilities during the March attacks. The company added that most affected enterprise customers had already migrated workloads or leveraged available backups to mitigate operational disruptions.