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Amazon said its Amazon Web Services (AWS) region in Bahrain has been disrupted for the second time this month due to drone activity linked to the continuing Middle East war.
The latest disruption, on Monday night, follows a few days after drone strikes damaged AWS data centres, disrupting services across the region.
“The AWS Bahrain region has been disrupted as a result of the ongoing conflict. We are working closely with local authorities and prioritising the safety of our personnel throughout our recovery efforts, an AWS representative told The National on Tuesday.
The company, the world’s largest cloud services provider, said it continues to support affected customers, helping them migrate to alternative AWS regions, with a large number already successfully operating their applications in other parts of the world. “As this situation evolves and, as we have advised before, we request those with workloads in the affected regions continue to migrate to other locations,” the company representative said.
Amazon did not elaborate on the extent of the damage or how long it anticipates the disruption to last.
The disruption to AWS infrastructure highlights the region’s growing reliance on cloud providers, Vibin Shaju, the Europe, Middle East and Africa vice president at California-headquartered The National. He warned that while hyperscale platforms offer redundancy, concentration risk remains.
“When applications rely heavily on a single cloud environment, slowness or service interruption can quickly ripple across banking apps, airline booking systems and consumer-facing services,” he said at the time.
The AWS incident this month mainly disrupted APIs and service availability, not core systems, but showed how reliance on shared infrastructure can create a “single point of impact” during conflict, according to Mr Shaju. Even secure internal systems still depend on the internet and edge infrastructure to connect externally.
He added that issues in a single cloud environment can quickly ripple across banking, airlines, and consumer services.
