How has the CrowdStrike global IT outage affected the Middle East and North Africa?

Airlines, banks, TV channels, and other businesses across the globe were scrambling on Friday to deal with one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program.

Chaos ensued as the cyber security company's IT failure forced some live news outlets to go off air and financial markets to be in limbo. 

Aviation officials in the United States briefly grounded all planes, while airlines elsewhere cancelled or delayed flights, as systems running Microsoft Windows crashed.

Microsoft said the issue began at 7pm GMT on Thursday, affecting users of its Azure cloud platform running cybersecurity software CrowdStrike Falcon.

"We recommend customers that are able to, to restore from a backup from before this time," the US software giant said in a technical update on its website.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said in a post on several social media platforms that a fix had been rolled out for the problem, describing it as a "defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts".

Experts suggested applying the fix would not be straightforward.

Here, The New Arab looks at how some parts of the Middle East and North Africa have been affected by the outage. 

United Arab Emirates

The UAE foreign ministry said that its electronic systems were functioning normally again following the global cyber outage.

The ministry said its attestation services had now resumed regular operations.

Dubai International Airport said on X that it was "back to operating normally" after the check-in process for "some airlines in Terminals 1 and 2" were impacted on Friday morning.

Turkey

Turkish Airlines announced on Friday it cancelled 84 flights after the global IT outage.

"In order to avoid any disruption, some flights will be cancelled and our flights will gradually return to normal as soon as possible," Yahya Ustun of Turkish Airlines announced on social media platform X.

Most of the Turkish flagship carrier's cancelled flights were domestic and to and from Europe.

"We are working to reduce our operational intensity in order to solve the software-related problem that affects many companies from different sectors around the world," Ustun said.

DenizBank, a private bank based in Turkey owned by Emirates NBD, said in a message to customers on X that it was "working to eliminate the disruption".

Saudi Arabia

A number of airlines at King Khalid International Airport in the Saudi capital Riyadh were also affected.

The airport said on X that a plan had been activated to "use alternative systems in cooperation with the air carriers".

It advised passengers to contact airlines before travelling to the airport to confirm flight status.

Qatar Airways

Qatar Airways said on X that the IT outage had not affected its flight operations.

Qatar's national carrier advised passengers travelling to and from Europe and the US to "expect some delays", adding that they can check their flight's current status on its website.

Royal Air Maroc

Royal Air Maroc said its website and mobile app were operational once more following disruptions caused by the IT outage.

"All services are now restored," the Moroccan national airline said on X.

Lebanon

The IT outage impacting Microsoft systems "did not affect air traffic" at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut, director Fadi Hassan told Lebanon's official National News Agency.

It did temporarily impact check-in and reservation systems, "but things have returned to normal and air traffic has not been affected", he said.

Israel

The Israeli health ministry said over a dozen hospitals were affected, the Times of Israel news website reported.

These hospitals were working manually because their digital services were not available, according to the ministry, which said there was no impact on care.

It said there may be problems ringing the medical emergency line and suggested residents phone the police if they are unable to reach the service.

There haven't been any issues up to now.

(AFP, The New Arab, Reuters)