Amazon said drone strikes significantly damaged two of its data centers and a facility in the Middle East amid the conflict in Iran, taking some of the tech giant’s services in the region offline.
The hits to two data centers in the United Arab Emirates and a facility in Bahrain occurred Sunday morning, “by objects” that created “sparks and fire,” Amazon Web Services initially said in a status report on its website.
In an update Monday morning, the company said the damage was caused by drone strikes tied to “the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.”
Amazon said it was working to restore service in the area, but warned that outages could be prolonged “given the nature of the physical damage involved” – including structural damage to facilities, disrupted power delivery and fire suppression activities that caused additional water damage.
In the meantime, Amazon Web Services advised customers to back up their data as instability is likely to continue, making operations “unpredictable.”
Several AWS services experienced “elevated error rates and degraded availability” after the strikes, including its EC2 service, which provides virtual servers for cloud applications; S3 data storage; and DynamoDB, a document database service.
Joint US-Israeli air strikes on Iran over the weekend killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sparking retaliation.
So far, six US service members have been killed.
President Trump has warned the strikes could last “four weeks or so,” vowing Monday night to step up attacks on Iran and saying, “The big one is coming.”
Amazon has warned customers of delivery delays in the Middle East as Iran has broadened its strikes to countries including the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain.
The company added notices in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE warning of an “extended delivery time in your area.”
Gasoline prices jumped above $3 a gallon Tuesday after Iran, the fourth-largest oil producer in OPEC, reportedly closed the Strait of Hormuz – a vital maritime route for crucial oil shipments – and threatened to set any ships that attempt to pass through on fire.
If Iran continues to hold the strait as a chokepoint, it could also make it difficult for Americans to get their hands on goods often shipped from China and other Eastern countries — like apparel, textiles and goods sold on Amazon, Temu and Shein, according to Shirvin Zeinalzadeh, professor and Middle East expert at Arizona State University.
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