Kuwait desalination plant, oil refinery hit by missile and drone strikes

Elsewhere, Oracle and Amazon Web Services data centres were targeted in the UAE, reports said.

Kuwait says a power and desalination plant has been hit by an Iranian attack.

Gulf countries continue to face retaliatory strikes on the 35th day of the United States and Israel’s war on Iran.

Kuwaiti authorities said the plant was struck before midday local time on Friday. The extent of the damage is not yet known.

The attack came hours after the Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery was targeted in early morning drone strikes. State news agency KUNA said the attack caused fires in a “number of operational units,” and no employees were injured.

Emergency and firefighting teams were sent with environmental experts monitoring air quality.

Al Jazeera’s Malik Traina, reporting from the capital, Kuwait City, said this was the third time the refinery’s been hit and that people across the country are on “high alert”.

“It’s one of the biggest refineries in the Middle East and it is also critical for local consumption,” he said.

Kuwait “is the closest country to Iran – just 80 kilometres separates Kuwait from Iran’s coastlines, so it’s perhaps the most easily targeted from these attacks from Iran,” he added.

In an early post on X, KUNA warned that “hostile missile and drone attacks” on Kuwait were under way. Sirens sounded during midair explosions as interceptions of Iranian missiles were heard across the country, the agency reported.

Kuwait and much of the Gulf are highly dependent on desalinated water. An Indian national was killed on March 30 after a Kuwaiti power and desalination plant was hit. Iran denied claims it launched the attacks and blamed Israel.

On Monday, Amazon Web Services confirmed that two of its data centres in the UAE were “directly struck” and that a third in Bahrain was damaged by a nearby drone strike.

The attacks appeared to have resulted in localised and limited disruption to AWS’s servers, said the Associated Press news agency.

Iran’s army spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari warned of impending attacks on regional power plants as US President Donald Trump warned of intensifying strikes on infrastructure.

If the US continues to threaten strikes on Iranian power plants, Tehran will begin targeting regional energy infrastructure and information and telecommunications companies with American shareholders, Zolfaghari said in a video posted on Friday by state-run Press TV.

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