Kuwait plant hit as Gulf states face fresh missile and drone strikes

Kuwait reports fresh strike on critical plant

Kuwait said a power and desalination plant was hit in an Iranian attack on Friday, as Gulf states continued to absorb retaliation strikes on the 35th day of the United States and Israel’s war on Iran. Officials said the plant was struck before midday local time, though the scale of the damage was still unclear.

The attack came just hours after the Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery was targeted in early morning drone strikes, according to the state news agency KUNA. The agency said fires broke out in a “number of operational units”, but no workers were injured.

Emergency crews and firefighters were sent to the refinery, while environmental officials monitored the area for air quality concerns. Authorities also rejected rumours that a radiation leak had occurred, because apparently a refinery fire was not enough excitement for one morning.

Reporting from Kuwait City, Al Jazeera’s Malik Traina said the refinery had been hit for the third time and that people across the country were on “high alert”.

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

He added that Kuwait, which sits about 80 kilometres from Iran’s coast, is especially exposed. “Kuwait is the closest country to Iran,” he said, making it, in practical terms, a rather obvious target in the current exchange of fire.

Earlier in the day, KUNA warned in an X post that “hostile missile and drone attacks” were under way. Sirens sounded, explosions were heard in the sky, and the agency reported that Iranian missiles were intercepted across the country.

Kuwait and much of the Gulf rely heavily on desalinated water. That dependence has already come with a death toll. On March 30, an Indian national was killed after a Kuwaiti power and desalination plant was hit. Iran denied carrying out that attack and blamed Israel instead.

UAE says it faced another wave of attacks

The United Arab Emirates also said on Friday that it was dealing with another round of alleged Iranian missile and drone strikes.

In Abu Dhabi, officials said debris from an intercepted projectile caused a fire at the Habshan gas facility, one of the country’s major gas processing complexes. The Abu Dhabi media office said on X that “operations have been suspended while authorities respond”.

The UAE defence ministry said its air defences intercepted 19 ballistic missiles and 26 drones on Thursday alone. That is only a slice of what Tehran has allegedly launched at the country since the war began, with the ministry saying the tally over time has reached hundreds of missiles and thousands of drones.

Authorities said at least two service members have been killed in the UAE and 191 people of different nationalities have been injured.

Saudi Arabia also said it shot down a drone in its airspace overnight, while Bahrain sounded missile alarms three times, according to Anadolu Agency.

Data centres drawn into the conflict

The fighting is now reaching far beyond energy infrastructure. Reports on Friday said Oracle and Amazon Web Services data centres in the UAE were also targeted, as Tehran appears to be following through on earlier threats to strike major US technology interests in the region.

Iran’s state news agency IRNA said Tehran had targeted an Oracle data centre in Dubai in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes that injured former Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi and killed his wife on April 1. Dubai officials pushed back quickly, calling that claim “fake news” in a post on X.

Separately, Amazon Web Services said earlier in the week that two of its data centres in the UAE were “directly struck”, while a third in Bahrain was damaged by a nearby drone strike. The Associated Press reported that the impact on AWS servers appeared to be localised and limited.

Iranian army spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari warned on Friday that more attacks on regional power plants were coming. He said that if the US continued to threaten strikes on Iranian power facilities, Tehran would begin targeting regional energy infrastructure and information and telecommunications companies with American shareholders.

That warning came as US President Donald Trump said strikes on Iran’s infrastructure would intensify, because even in this conflict, the threat of escalation still somehow has room to grow.