AWS Says Some Cloud Data Cannot Be Recovered After Data Centers Suffer War Damage
AWS confirmed some customer data in war-damaged Middle East data centers is permanently unrecoverable after Iranian drone strikes hit Bahrain and UAE facilities.
Amazon Web Services said in a September 15 Health Dashboard update that it is unable to restore data hosted exclusively in its Bahrain me-south-1 region and the UAE mec1-az2 availability zone after Iranian missile and drone strikes that began in March. Damage in Bahrain spanned multiple availability zones, exceeding what AWS regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand. Customers without backups outside the affected footprint lost data permanently; AWS has suspended regional billing, notified authorities in both countries, and expects further UAE updates in coming months and Bahrain updates in early 2027.