Dubai: Amazon Web Services on Sunday announced that multiple services in the United Arab Emirates region were experiencing disruptions due to impacts by objects that caused a data center to catch fire. At approximately 4:30 AM PST (1230 GMT), one of the Availability Zones (mec1-az2) was affected, resulting in sparks and a subsequent fire.

According to Anadolu Agency, Amazon stated in its official communication that the fire department had to shut off power to the affected facility and its generators in order to extinguish the fire. The incident has led to significant service disruptions, with Amazon advising its customers to back up any critical data to another AWS Region as a precautionary measure. In their most recent update at 12:52 AM PST (0852 GMT) on Monday, Amazon indicated that a full recovery of services is anticipated to take several more hours.

The disruption comes amid heightened tensions in the region, following a large-scale attack by the US and Israel on Iran. The attack, which occurred on Saturday, resulted in the deaths of several top Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In retaliation, Tehran has launched drone and missile strikes targeting Israel and Gulf countries hosting US assets, adding to the regional instability.