Drone attack hits AWS data centres; UAE apps and banks disrupted
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Banking and digital payments services in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were briefly disrupted after Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) data centres were targeted by a drone attack. The incident occurred amid escalating tensions in the Middle East.
AWS stated on Monday night, 2 March 2026, that two of its data centres in the UAE and one facility in Bahrain were damaged by the attack, rendering them temporarily inaccessible.
The disruption affected a broad range of consumer apps, financial services, and enterprise systems.
Transport and delivery platform Careem, payments providers Alaan and Hubpay reported outages due to AWS infrastructure issues. Several major banks were affected, including Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) and Emirates NBD.
‘Due to IT disruptions across the region recently, ADCB Mobile Banking app and Contact Centre services were temporarily unavailable,’ ADCB said in a statement on Monday, as quoted by CNBC International.
Emirates NBD also confirmed that its telephone banking services were temporarily affected, though they were back online by Tuesday local time.
Global technology company Snowflake also noted higher rates of connectivity errors in the region.
Alaan had said that its mobile and web apps were offline due to a ‘critical AWS disruption caused by the ongoing regional situation,’ though the post was deleted a few hours later.
Sarwa’s investment app reported that its core services were back online on Tuesday, while Hubpay warned customers of potential login issues during the outage. Careem, by contrast, said its services had fully recovered.
AWS said recovery efforts were still under way. The company also urged customers with workloads in the Middle East to move their systems to an alternative AWS region.
‘We are making progress in recovery across a range of workloads,’ AWS said in an update on the AWS Health dashboard on Tuesday morning US time.
The drone attack occurred on Sunday and caused physical damage to AWS infrastructure. The company said the attack triggered ‘sparks and fire’ at one of its facilities.
In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly affected, while in Bahrain the drone attack near one of our facilities caused physical damage to infrastructure, AWS added.
AWS noted that the attack caused structural damage, disrupted power supplies, and in some cases required fire suppression that led to additional water damage.
Regional tensions had escalated after the United States and Israel launched a joint strike on Iran, which killed the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran then retaliated with attacks on various strategic targets in the region, including military bases and critical infrastructure such as data centres and oil and gas facilities.
The conflict’s impact also rattled global markets. Iran’s closure of the Hormuz Strait triggered a spike in oil prices and pressure in global financial markets, with stock exchanges in the United States, Europe, and Asia all retreating amid growing concerns about global energy supply disruptions.