Amazon Web Services didn't design its data centers to withstand war, and now the company admits it can't recover what's been lost. Half a year after Iranian drone strikes knocked out multiple Amazon data centers, the US tech company has acknowledged the permanent loss of some customer data that was hosted in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Amazon Web Services was "unable to restore access to the resources and data" hosted in some of the war-damaged data centers, according to an AWS dashboard update posted on September 15. The development was first reported by Reuters and suggests that the Iranian strikes inflicted catastrophic damage on the data centers. Customer data was irretrievably lost in one of three AWS availability zones in the United Arab Emirates region, specifically the mec1-az2 availability zone.

Images showing widespread damage to multiple US sites in the Middle East from Iranian strikes have been obtained by the BBC's US partner CBS. The photos, provided by active military personnel, show a severed radar jet, flattened trailers and severely damaged buildings. The undated photos were taken at US bases and sites in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. One member of the military, who was not named by CBS, said: This is major damage to our bases that hasn't been communicated to the American public. We're standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face.