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AWS's 3 data centres in me-south-1 are:

BAH53 (Manama): https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1492345589

  An adjoining substation to BAH53 had one of it's two main buildings damaged/destroyed about 2026-07-16 per https://soaratlas.com/maps/asia-damage-to-data-center-power-substation-bahrain-jul-16th-2026-142024

  Then about 2026-07-22 BAH53 itself was damaged/destroyed per https://soaratlas.com/maps/asia-damage-to-amazon-web-services-bahrain-jul-22nd-2026-142112

  Possibly the least defended of the three sites as there is no air/missile defence battery in between this site and Iran.
BAH54 (Zallaq): https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1359931661

  No media reports about this data centre being attacked previously. Possibly the safest of the three as there are at least two (probably three) air/missile defence batteries in between this site and Iran.
BAH55 (Hamala): https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/956069872

  Apparently the Batelco DC.1 data centre adjoining (and apparently critical to) BAH55 was damaged/destroyed about 2026-04-01 per https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk28nj0lrjo _or_ the adjoining substation to these two facilities was damaged/destroyed -- news articles are hard to follow as to what exactly might have been damaged and the extent of damage caused.

  Middle ground for defence with one or two (maybe three) air/missile defence batteries between this site and Iran, depending on where drones/missiles are launched from.
If these data centres are rebuilt, you'd maybe expect them to be rebuilt in new locations behind existing _permanent_ (and seemingly quite expensive) air/missile defence batteries in Bahrain (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1492281507 and https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1492953902). Based on the permanency of those air/missile defence batteries it doesn't look like the government of Bahrain are expecting things to get safer for data centre hosting in Bahrain any time soon.
Update: IRGC published satellite imagery a few hours ago showing an impact to BAH54, apparently impacted on 2026-07-24, alongside another undated image before the impact. From a quick comparison of both images with reliable satellite imagery sources (e.g. WV02 image dated 2025-02-21 on ESRI World Imagery Wayback) there are no obvious signs of image manipulation, with roof features and surrounding buildings/other features lining up as expected. Additionally the claimed post-strike image adds a significant number of vehicles to the site (when there are usually close to none present), which may correspond to fire fighting vehicles expected to be monitoring the site afterwards. Further, Sentinel-2 imagery from 2026-07-24 shows a dark patch (blast damage) on the roof of BAH54 per https://browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu/?zoom=18&lat=26.0509...
> If these data centres are rebuilt, you'd maybe expect them to be rebuilt in new locations behind existing _permanent_ (and seemingly quite expensive) air/missile defence batteries in Bahrain

I've seen data centers that were built to withstand an aircraft impact (they were located on a major airport flight path). I wonder if they'd rebuild these to that standard or something even stronger, given these attacks. It probably wouldn't help much against ballistic missiles, but it might make it more resilient against drone attacks.

Here's a Google Maps link to BAH53 (Manama), it doesn't look like the hardened data centers I seen (e.g. sloped walls like a bunker): https://maps.app.goo.gl/6DjhQs753p6EHQUu6

Update 2:

Upon checking Sentinel-2 imagery for BAH55 from 2026-03-29 to 2026-04-13 (and all later imagery) there is also visible blast damage to the roof of BAH55, which would correspond in timing to media reports about damage caused about 2026-04-01. Sentinel-2 imagery appears to clarify AWS' claim of "while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities" to mean a direct impact to the building. However it seems likely from high resolution satellite imagery of BAH55 that the machinery rooms of the building perhaps took most of the damage, perhaps leaving data halls in a better shape elsewhere in the building (but possibly still unusable due to water/smoke damage).

[1] https://browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu/?zoom=17&lat=26.156&...

[2] https://browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu/?zoom=17&lat=26.156&...

It's sad but also interesting that in someone's disaster recovery plan now they need to add a line item about analyzing which datacenters are behind air defenses.
What's hosted at BAH54?
Isn't an AWS region comprised of at least three data centers "many kilometers apart"[1]?

So, if the whole of me-south-1 (Bahrain) went down it means at least three buildings many kilometers apart must have been attacked.

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regio...

See also - Bahrain Held the Data — Riyadh Held the Vision - https://houseofsaud.com/aws-bahrain-vision-2030-irgc/
Shows unavailable, last status update 30th April https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status
Makes me wonder how much use it actually gets if this is the first we’re hearing about it.

Edit: Incidentally news of the original strike was posted on HN 5 months ago and flagged, for whatever reason. Why would it be flagged? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47317587

There was a building hit near the data center on the first day of the war and that took down one AZ (unfortunately, two of my three EC2 instances were in that AZ). The hit on April 1 pretty much took it all down. Fortunately I had relatively up-to-date backups (both within 24 hours before each outage) so all I lost was a little email (spam) and some libera chat logs. I've moved to ap-southeast-1, which means trading a ~ 60ms ping to ~ 110ms.
me-south-1 is in fact, quite possibly permanently, "offline".
1. Wow this is a headline.

2. It’s expected and war, and while war is not good, I wonder about data backups and succession planning for this.

3. It makes sense they would’ve had a fire drill and reviewed since it’s a capital investment, 6 months of war, at the same time Bahrain is considered stable, so I really wonder about the conversation around this and if there was any disaster planning with this scenario in mind.

4. If there wasn’t, I’m sure there is now across all regions of AWS.

This month has been for me, a uptick in unique headlines that I wouldn’t have thought would happen.

The civilization in which you are a part of, this very mass that is greater than you and I, is evolving and changing. How can there not be new unique headlines?
Related: Ukraine have been targeting [1] warehouses owned by Wildberries, the Russian domestic equivalent of Amazon, causing $2.2bn of damage to-date.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/24/ukraine-wareho...

I feel for both, people who where hosting there not expecting this war and this attack and the attackers, because they didn't attack just because they wanted but attacked as a response as stated earlier.

Winner: US military industrial complex + Israel

Losers: Everyone else

American agression winning silly prizes.
My colleague in Dubai says that ATM's are all working so the claim that bank infrastructure is down may not be correct.
Was there really no other source than "houseofsaud.com" here? Seems like a strange source to be promoting on HackerNews. Their About, Contact, and Press pages don't even work. I can not find who owns this publication.

I don't see them listed on https://mediabiasfactcheck.com either, which is usually a red flag for me. For example you can find other suspicious sources - like Iran International - on there https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/iran-international-bias-and-c...

As an aside: I lack the vocabulary, but man those interactive "stats" cards scream LLM-written to me. No problem with it, necessarily, just something about that style seems to raise a flag in my mind.
I wonder how the real House of Saud would feel about having their name used by some random news website? Not amused, probably...
Between this and the Wildberries depot strikes in the Ukraine war, I think it really highlights how much peace was required to make the centralisation we've experienced work.
How long will it take to rebuild those datacenters given the supply shortage? Are we talking like 3+ years?
DIMMs and SSD prices are about to go “plaid”.
The disconnection of the world into isolated anclaves proceeds as planned.
As someone who has lived most of his life in Iran, I ask those who find any alignment with the IRGC to please understand that it is a religiously fanatic military and terrorist group.

They are behind many atrocities in Iran and in the region including the situation in Gaza (partially). They also provided weaponry and support to Russia against Ukraine.

Is there a news article on this event that isn’t AI slop?
Despite the destruction, me-south-1 still has more nines than us-east-1
After this strike, the only AWS region in the ME that remains operational is the one in Tel Aviv (a bit ironic if you ask me).

UAE has been down for months, Bahrain is now offline, Saudi Arabia is still under construction.

oh no haha don't target the data centers that are destroying our climate that would make me soooo mad ;)
Yawn. The less Amazon the better. Wake me up when they start paying taxes.
Good!
Soo.. Is this bullish for the stock price or nah?