Explosions were heard across parts of Addis Ababa in the early hours of 1 October. Three diplomatic sources told Reuters the blasts took place. An intelligence official told the Associated Press there had been three of them, in three different locations. Residents in Gotera and Bethel described loud explosions shortly after midnight.
Hours earlier, the national intelligence service had banned drone flights over the city.
Three accounts, from three different sides
A source linked to the opposition alliance told Reuters it had carried out drone strikes on the capital, including on the military's headquarters. On its own, that is a claim by the party that benefits from making it, and Reuters treated it as unconfirmed.
It is no longer on its own.
A diplomatic source based in the city told AFP that drone strikes were the "most likely" cause, and that the devices were probably FPV drones — "essentially militarised commercial drones fitted with an explosive charge". The same source was careful about the limits: "we haven't been able to obtain imagery or independent confirmation".
Then an Ethiopian security source told the Egyptian outlet Mada Masr that defence systems had detected an attempted attack using suicide drones against the military command headquarters at Tor Hailoch and the area around the 24th Infantry Division in Kirkos — and that the drones were brought down by the army's air defences.
That third account is the one that moved our assessment. It is the government's own side conceding that drones reached the capital, which is not something a government volunteers. AFP reports that the government and the army have refused to comment on the strikes publicly.
Why there is nothing to see
Witnesses told Reuters there was no visible damage near the military base. We compared Sentinel-2 satellite images of the area from before and after and found no large-scale change either.
Neither of those is evidence that nothing happened. At ten metres per pixel a strike on one building is invisible, and the image was taken about ten hours later, by which time smoke would have cleared. If the drones were in fact shot down, as the security source says, there would be no impact damage to find at all.
The timings do not agree
Four accounts give four different times. A diplomatic source told AP it heard a blast at 7pm. Ethiopia Observer says shortly after midnight. ACLED says around 1am. Mada Masr's security source puts detection at 6am, with a Tor Hailoch resident hearing explosions at about 6:30am and again forty-five minutes later.
Either several separate things happened across twelve hours, or some of these accounts are wrong. We cannot yet tell which, and we are not going to pick a time to make the story tidier.