{
  "id": 7784110,
  "title": "AWS says wartime damage means some Middle East cloud resources are gone for good",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/16/aws-says-wartime-damage-means-some-middle-east-cloud-resources-are",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-16T12:11:56.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Register Science",
    "slug": "the-register-science",
    "url": "https://www.theregister.com/off-prem/2026/09/16/aws-says-wartime-damage-means-some-middle-east-cloud-resources-are-gone-for-good/5296830"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced that some of its cloud resources and data in the Middle East are permanently lost following damage to datacenters during the US war with Iran. The cloud giant confirmed that services exclusively hosted in its Bahrain Region (me-south-1) are currently inaccessible due to infrastructure damage spanning multiple Availability Zones beyond what its regional and multi-AZ services can handle. Following the initial damage in March, AWS had advised customers to migrate their workloads to other Regions, most of which complied before further attacks crippled a second Availability Zone in April, rendering the entire Region inaccessible. Similarly, AWS determined that it cannot restore access to resources and data in one Availability Zone located in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), mec1-az2, one of three in its UAE Region. Two AWS facilities in the UAE were struck by drones in March following Iran's retaliation against US-Israeli strikes on its territory. While AWS is actively working to recover resources in the affected Regions, including some in mec1-az1 and mec1-az3, most customers have managed to resume operations in different AWS Regions by restoring from backups or copying accessible data. AWS support teams remain available to assist customers in moving their applications to alternate Regions. As a precaution, AWS and other tech companies had previously recommended customers to enact disaster recovery plans, recover from remote backups stored in other Regions, and update applications to direct traffic away from the affected Regions.",
  "summary": "Iranian strikes overwhelmed regional redundancy in Bahrain and left one UAE Availability Zone inaccessible",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 3,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "The National Business",
        "title": "Ransomware activity rises across Middle East as criminal groups attack Gulf",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/16/ransomware-activity-rises-across-middle-east-as-criminal-groups",
        "published": "2026-09-16T03:30:00.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "The Register",
        "title": "AWS says wartime damage means some Middle East cloud resources are gone for good",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/16/aws-says-wartime-damage-means-some-middle-east-cloud-resources-are-7786762",
        "published": "2026-09-16T12:11:56.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}