By Megan Cerullo
Updated on: March 3, 2026 / 10:14 AM EST / CBS News
Amazon said drones struck three of its Middle East data centers, causing outages tied to the ongoing conflict in the region. Two Amazon Web Services facilities in the United Arab Emirates were directly hit, and a drone strike near an Amazon data center in Bahrain also damaged that facility, the company said on its AWS health dashboard.
“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. Operations in the Middle East remain “significantly impaired,” with customers experiencing elevated error rates and degraded availability for services.
Amazon said it is working to restore services and repair physical damage while cautioning that the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable. The company encouraged customers in the region to back up data and consider migrating workloads to servers in other regions.
Shares of Amazon declined $3.40, or 1.6%, to $204.99 in early trading.