Amazon Web Services in UAE face disruption as data center catches fire

ISTANBUL

Amazon Web Services on Sunday said that multiple services in the United Arab Emirates region were experiencing disruptions due to impacts by objects that have caused a data center to catch fire.

“At around 4:30 AM PST (1230 GMT) one of our Availability Zones (mec1-az2) was impacted by objects that struck the data center, creating sparks and fire,” Amazon said in its statement.

"The fire department shut off power to the facility and generators as they worked to put out the fire," the company said.

In its most recent update at 12:52 AM PST (0852 GMT) on Monday, Amazon stated that a “full recovery is still expected to be many hours away,” urging customers to “backup any critical data, to another AWS Region.”

The statement came as the US and Israel launched a large-scale attack on Iran on Saturday, killing several top Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In response, Tehran has retaliated with drone and missile strikes targeting Israel, as well as Gulf countries which are home to US assets.