DUBAI: The interception of two Emirates airliners not only endangered the lives of hundreds of people, but also represented a “very serious escalation” by the Qatari government – UAE daily Gulf News has said in a hard-hitting editorial that accuses Doha of "crossing a red line."
The newspaper was responding to two incidents on Monday where Emirates airline passenger jets traveling to Bahrain were intercepted by Qatar fighter planes.
The article said Qatar’s “wilful and deliberate” use of its fighter jets on civilian aircraft in international airspace showed the country to be an “active participant in terrorizing those on board the two civilian flights,” adding: “Clearly, Qatar has no interest in resolving this dispute, has no regard for the safety of air passengers, and has upped the ante in the most dangerous and deliberate fashion. That has been duly noted by all.”
Doha has denied that the incidents happened, but on Tuesday Bahrain’s Civil Aviation Authority released video footage of the tracking of one of the incidents.
Questioning Doha’s denial, the editorial said the incidents were witnessed both by passengers and crew onboard the flights – as well as air traffic controllers at Manama airport who saw the interceptions “unfold on their radar screens.”
“This incident represents a very serious escalation by the Qatari government, and that it is now willing to endanger the lives of some 400 persons on two civilian aircraft speaks to its recklessness,” the editorial stated.
The article went on to explain that the flights were using a popular “air corridor into Bahrain” that was used regularly each day.
“It is an incident that jeopardized the safety of the planes and passengers, and it is a blatant and unacceptable action that has been reported to authorities at the highest level responsible for civilian aircraft movement and safety,” the comment piece added.
The incidents were just the latest in the ongoing standoff that started in June 2017 when the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Egypt broke off diplomatic relations with Qatar amid claims that the small gas-rich nation supported extremists – it is an allegation Doha denies. The four nations later agreed to ban Qatar from using their airspace.
UAE daily slams Qatar fighter jet intercept of Emirates passenger flights
UAE daily slams Qatar fighter jet intercept of Emirates passenger flights
Amazon’s AWS reports outage after UAE datacenter struck by ‘objects’
- AWS confirmed sparks and fire after objects hit UAE data center causing disruptions to Emirate and Bahrain regions
- Full recovery expected to “be many hours away”
LONDON: Amazon’s cloud-computing facilities in the Middle East faced power and connectivity issues on Monday after unidentified “objects” struck its data center in the United Arab Emirates.
The objects had triggered a fire on Sunday that forced authorities to eventually cut power to two clusters of Amazon data centers in the UAE, with restoration expected to take several more hours, according to Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) status page.
Localized power issues impacted AWS services in both the UAE and neighboring Bahrain, according to the page. Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank said its platforms and mobile app were unavailable due to a region-wide IT disruption, although it did not directly link the outage to the AWS incident.
While Amazon did not identify the objects, the incident happened on the same day Iran fired a barrage of drones and missiles at Gulf States in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A strike, if confirmed, on the AWS facility in the UAE will mark the first time a major US tech company’s data center has been knocked offline by military action. It could also raise questions around Big Tech’s pace of expansion in the region.
US tech giants have been positioning the UAE as a regional hub for artificial intelligence computing needed to power services such as ChatGPT. Microsoft said in November it plans to bring its total investment in the UAE to $15 billion by the end of 2029 and will use Nvidia chips for its data centers there.
“In previous conflicts, regional adversaries such as Iran and its proxies targeted pipelines, refineries, and oil fields in Gulf partner states. In the compute era, these actors could also target data centers, energy infrastructure supporting compute, and fiber chokepoints,” Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies said last week.
Microsoft as well as Google and Oracle — both of which also operate facilities in the UAE — did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
AWS said a full recovery from the issues was expected to “be many hours away” for both UAE and Bahrain.
The outage had disrupted a dozen core cloud services and the company advised customers to back up critical data and shift operations to servers in unaffected AWS regions.
