Explosion Disrupts AWS Data Center in UAE Amid Regional Missile Tensions
An explosion occurred last Saturday (28 February) at a data center in the United Arab Emirates operated by the cloud services division of American online retail company Amazon, Amazon Web Services (AWS). The incident sparked a fire and led to a power outage. The development came shortly after Iran carried out missile and drone attacks in the Emirates.
Amazon stated that in the early hours of the morning local time, one of its data centers in the ‘me-central-1’ region was struck by an “unknown object.” The impact caused a fire, and the fire service arrived at the scene and brought the blaze under control. Due to the power outage, some services were disrupted. However, other data centers in the Emirates remain operational.
The incident at the data center occurred against the backdrop of Iranian drone and missile attacks in the Emirates. On Saturday, after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, Iran responded by carrying out retaliatory attacks on American and Israeli installations located in the Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar.
The Ministry of Defence of the United Arab Emirates stated that its air defense forces were able to intercept most of the 165 ballistic missiles and 541 drones launched by Iran. However, debris fell in various areas, resulting in the deaths of three people and injuries to at least 58 others.
An AWS spokesperson said that it would take several hours to restore power to the affected data center. As other data centers in the Emirates remain fully operational, customers have been advised to use those facilities.
DBTech/BMT/OR
