Fire breaks out at AWS facility amid Middle East military tension

A critical Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centre in the United Arab Emirates was plunged into darkness on Sunday after being struck by unidentified "objects."

The impact, which occurred around 7:30 a.m. ET, ignited a blaze at one of the firm's "Availability Zones."

Local firefighters were forced to isolate the site by shutting off all power and backup generators to combat the flames, leading to widespread connectivity issues across the region.

The timing of the incident is particularly sensitive, coinciding with an escalation of military strikes between the US, Israel, and Iran.

While AWS has not specified what the "objects" were, the sky over Dubai has recently been filled with missiles and interceptor fallout.

This regional chaos has already caused significant damage to landmarks like the Burj Al-Arab and Dubai’s main airport.

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

By Sunday evening, AWS reported "significant signs of recovery" for several systems, though the primary facility remained without electricity.

The company admitted, "We do not have an ETA for power restoration at this time. For customers that can, we recommend using alternate Availability Zones or other AWS Regions where applicable."

With three major zones in the UAE, Amazon is urging businesses to reroute their traffic to avoid further disruption.

The event underscores the physical vulnerability of cloud infrastructure during times of intense regional conflict, leaving many users waiting for a full return to service.