{
  "id": 7786762,
  "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",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-16T12:11:56.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Register",
    "slug": "the-register",
    "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 it is unable to restore access to certain cloud resources and data in its Middle East Availability Zones following damage to data centers during the US war with Iran. In an update to its AWS Health Dashboard, AWS confirmed that its Bahrain Region (me-south-1) is now inaccessible, with damage spanning multiple Availability Zones beyond the capacity of regional and multi-AZ services to handle. After assessing the situation, AWS determined that it cannot restore access to resources exclusively hosted in this region. Following the initial damage to the Bahrain Availability Zone in March, AWS advised customers to migrate their workloads to other regions, most of which complied before a second Availability Zone was disrupted in April, rendering the entire region unavailable. AWS has also reached a similar conclusion regarding one Availability Zone in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), stating that it cannot re-establish access to resources and data in mec1-az2, one of the region's three Availability Zones. Two AWS facilities in the UAE were targeted by drones in March, following retaliatory strikes against US-Israeli attacks on Iranian territory. AWS notes that it is still working on recovering resources in the region, including those in mec1-az1 and mec1-az3. Most customers have managed to resume operations in other AWS regions by restoring from backups or copying any accessible data. AWS support teams remain available to assist customers in moving applications to alternative regions. While AWS cannot offer additional guidance beyond the updates on its Health Dashboard, the company stresses that distributing applications and resources across multiple Availability Zones is recommended to withstand the loss of a single location. However, this approach does not protect against a complete Region-wide failure, which necessitates a disaster recovery plan involving another region. AWS and several other tech companies had advised customers to recover resources from backups and replicate them in alternate regions, ideally in Europe, after the initial attacks, and this advice appears to have proven effective.",
  "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 Science",
        "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",
        "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."
}