AWS acknowledges permanent loss of customer data after strikes on Gulf data centres

Amazon Web Services has acknowledged the irreversible loss of some customer data after damage to data centres in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates during reported Iranian strikes.

An AWS dashboard update posted on 15 September said the company was unable to restore access to data and resources across all three availability zones in Bahrain. In the UAE, customer data was irretrievably lost in one of the region’s three availability zones, while AWS continues efforts to restore resources in the other two.

“The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple Availability Zones and exceeded what our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand,” AWS said in the update, according to Ars Technica. Availability zones can be serviced by one or more data centres.

AWS said it was replacing affected infrastructure and working to recover regional resources. It had suspended customer billing in the affected regions and urged customers to migrate workloads to other cloud regions and maintain remote backups. Ars Technica reported that AWS also issued US$150 million in customer credits after the initial strikes, citing reporting by Reuters.

The strikes reportedly began on 1 March, followed by further attacks affecting Bahrain facilities on 1 April and 24 July. The source material does not specify the extent of customer data loss across either region.

AWS said it would provide a further update on Bahrain in early 2027. Restoration work in the UAE remains ongoing.