Amazon's AWS reports outage after UAE data centre struck by 'objects'

Amazon's cloud-computing unit's facilities in the Middle East were facing power and connectivity issues on Monday, the company said, after its United Arab Emirates data centre was struck by "objects," triggering a fire.

Amazon Web Services' UAE and Bahrain regions were affected by outages, it said, citing localised power issues for both regions.

Two of Amazon Cloud Unit's zones, which are clusters of data centres, in the UAE, were without power on Monday, the company said on its status page.

AWS said on Sunday that one zone in the UAE was affected after "objects" struck the data centre and created sparks and fire, following which power was shut off.

"We can confirm that a localised power issue has affected another availability zone" in the UAE region, AWS said.

AWS did not confirm or deny, when asked earlier, whether the UAE incident was connected to the Iranian strikes on neighbouring Gulf states, including the UAE and Bahrain, in response to US and Israeli attacks on the Islamic Republic.

The cloud firm had reported some recovery in the UAE region earlier on Monday, but is now asking customers in other regions to rely on its services, adding that it was working to restore power and connectivity.

The cloud division expected full recovery to "be many hours away" for both the UAE and Bahrain.

Separately, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank said on Monday that technical issues were affecting some of its platforms and its mobile app. It was unclear if the outage at the lender was related to AWS.