When drones strike a data centre, physical damage to the building is usually followed by invisible damage. Modern economy, from banking systems, payment gateways, government databases, hospital records, and the software many offices run on, all flow through such data centres.
That is why the Amazon Web Services disruption in Bahrain reported by Reuters carries consequences that extend far beyond the Middle East.
Earlier on Tuesday, an exclusive report by the agency stated that Amazon confirmed its Amazon Web Services (AWS) Bahrain cloud region has been "disrupted" due to drone activity.
This would make it the second such strike on a Middle East Amazon facility since the US-Israeli war with Iran began.
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed, as per the report, that the disruption was caused by drone activity in the area. Amazon said it is helping customers migrate workloads to alternate AWS regions while it works to recover, without disclosing the extent of damage or the expected recovery timeline.
"As this situation evolves and, as we have advised before, we request those with workloads in the affected regions continue to migrate to other locations," Amazon said in a statement Monday night, as per Reuters.
The Bahrain attack is the second strike on AWS infrastructure in the region. Earlier this month, around March 1–2, drones struck two AWS data centres in the UAE directly and caused damage through a nearby explosion at the Bahrain facility, resulting in structural damage, power outages, fires, and water damage from fire suppression systems.
Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank reported its mobile platforms went offline during that outage. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed responsibility for that first Bahrain strike, stating it specifically targeted the facility because AWS hosts US military workloads there, a claim AWS declined to comment on.
Back home, India is among the largest users of AWS infrastructure in Asia. Many Indian banks, fintech platforms, government services, and enterprise software stacks run partially on AWS, including in the very Middle East regions now under attack.
AWS operates its nearest primary region to India in Mumbai, but many Indian enterprises use the Bahrain and UAE regions as low-latency alternatives for Gulf-facing operations or as disaster recovery backups.
The disruption could present itself as a challenge, a stress test of sorts, of how good India’s cloud policy is, especially when it comes to physical infrastructure that powers many services online.
So far, no Indian services have officially provided a statement on whether their services in the Middle East region are affected due to the AWS Bahrain outage.