24 September, 07:57Z ·
before29 September, 07:57Z ·
after
6.1 km across · Sentinel-2 (S2B) MSI L2A ·
10.0 m per pixel · identical extent and scale
እዚ ከርእዮ ዝኽእልን ዘይክእልን።
Sentinel-2 true colour at 10 m per pixel, acquired 83.0 h after the reported event time. One pixel is roughly the footprint of a small building, so damage to an individual structure, a crater, or munition debris would not be resolved. This imagery could show a burn scar, a large destroyed or removed structure, a plume caught at the moment of overpass, or substantial change to fuel or vehicle areas. Absence of visible change therefore carries little information about whether a small strike occurred. For THIS incident the floor is decisive against the null meaning much: ACLED reports a blast being HEARD, with no fire or destruction claimed. A single munition detonation leaves nothing a 10 m sensor resolves.
እዚ ከርእዮ ዝኽእልን ዘይክእልን። Sentinel-2 true colour at ten metres per pixel over a 2.4 km box centred on the coordinate an open-source analyst gave for a destroyed warehouse. The burn-ratio test behind this pair uses the 20 m shortwave infrared bands, which is the standard method for finding burn scars and far more sensitive to them than true colour. At that sampling a warehouse is one or two samples. This pair can show a burn area of roughly thirty metres or more, a collapsed large structure, or aircraft moved off an apron. It cannot resolve a single damaged building, and a null in it says nothing about what finer imagery shows.
CTP's inability to corroborate damage in low-resolution imagery is NOT evidence that no strike occurred. At Sentinel-class resolution, a strike on a hardened or small target is expected to be invisible. Treat the negative as uninformative.
መጽናዕቲ — ACLED expert comment, 'Blasts in Addis Ababa signal dangerous new phase in Ethiopia's conflict', attributed to Dr Jalale Getachew Birru, East Africa Senior Analyst. States that ACLED 'has confirmed reports of a possible drone-related blast
ዝተዓቀበ ቅዳሕ
መጽናዕቲ — The Critical Threats Project is reported to have analysed satellite imagery around reported strikes including Bishoftu and Semera, stating that some alleged damage could not be corroborated in the low-resolution imagery it had.
no source URL recovered
ቴርማል — NASA FIRMS detections within 150 km of Harar Meda airfield, 25 Sep - 2 Oct 2026: 52 in total, none at the airfield on 26 September. The nearest on the event date was 38.3 km away. Four detections fall within 10 km of the airfield but all ar
ካብ ዝተመዝገበ ሕቶ ዳግማይ ዝተፈጠረ
ዓሚቝ ዳህሳስ
ምንጭታትን ቴክኒካዊ መበቆልን
ACLED
ACLED expert comment, 'Blasts in Addis Ababa signal dangerous new phase in Ethiopia's conflict', attributed to Dr Jalale Getachew Birru, East Africa Senior Analyst. States that ACLED 'has confirmed reports of a possible drone-related blast heard at the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) Air Force headquarters in Bishoftu on 26 September'. Note the careful construction: what is confirmed is the existence of reports of a possible blast, not the blast itself.
The Critical Threats Project is reported to have analysed satellite imagery around reported strikes including Bishoftu and Semera, stating that some alleged damage could not be corroborated in the low-resolution imagery it had.
Technical provenance
Timestamp basis
unknown
Satellite image · 24 Sep 2026
Sentinel-2 true-colour crop acquired 2026-09-24T07:57Z, before the reported strike. Footprint covers 100% of the requested area.
["earth-search STAC query (sentinel-2-l2a)", "windowed read of asset 'visual' at native resolution (EPSG:32637)", "bands 1-3 as RGB", "PNG encode"]
Bbox
[38.973396, 8.690221, 39.027924, 8.744119]
Crs
EPSG:4326
Resolution m
10.0
Cloud cover pct
7.1296
License
Copernicus Sentinel data 2026, processed by ESA. Free and open under the Copernicus licence; redistribution permitted with attribution.
Redistributable
True
Detectability note
Sentinel-2 true colour at 10 m per pixel, acquired 37.0 h before the reported event time. One pixel is roughly the footprint of a small building, so damage to an individual structure, a crater, or munition debris would not be resolved. This imagery could show a burn scar, a large destroyed or removed structure, a plume caught at the moment of overpass, or substantial change to fuel or vehicle areas. Absence of visible change therefore carries little information about whether a small strike occurred. For THIS incident the floor is decisive against the null meaning much: ACLED reports a blast being HEARD, with no fire or destruction claimed. A single munition detonation leaves nothing a 10 m sensor resolves.
Satellite image · 29 Sep 2026
Sentinel-2 true-colour crop acquired 2026-09-29T07:57Z, after the reported strike. Footprint covers 100% of the requested area.
["earth-search STAC query (sentinel-2-l2a)", "windowed read of asset 'visual' at native resolution (EPSG:32637)", "bands 1-3 as RGB", "PNG encode"]
Bbox
[38.973396, 8.690221, 39.027924, 8.744119]
Crs
EPSG:4326
Resolution m
10.0
Cloud cover pct
3.4965
License
Copernicus Sentinel data 2026, processed by ESA. Free and open under the Copernicus licence; redistribution permitted with attribution.
Redistributable
True
Detectability note
Sentinel-2 true colour at 10 m per pixel, acquired 83.0 h after the reported event time. One pixel is roughly the footprint of a small building, so damage to an individual structure, a crater, or munition debris would not be resolved. This imagery could show a burn scar, a large destroyed or removed structure, a plume caught at the moment of overpass, or substantial change to fuel or vehicle areas. Absence of visible change therefore carries little information about whether a small strike occurred. For THIS incident the floor is decisive against the null meaning much: ACLED reports a blast being HEARD, with no fire or destruction claimed. A single munition detonation leaves nothing a 10 m sensor resolves.
Fire-detection data
NASA FIRMS detections within 150 km of Harar Meda airfield, 25 Sep - 2 Oct 2026: 52 in total, none at the airfield on 26 September. The nearest on the event date was 38.3 km away. Four detections fall within 10 km of the airfield but all are on 1 October, five days later, at 3.4-8.0 MW, the scale of ordinary agricultural burning. Overpass coverage on 26 September is well established: VIIRS NOAA-20 passes at 10:19-10:24Z and a night pass at 22:57Z, plus MODIS at 06:01Z, 12:38Z and 18:26Z, with that day's Ethiopian detections spanning latitudes 3.02-15.48.
Stream the open 7-day global CSVs for noaa-20-viirs-c2, suomi-npp-viirs-c2 and modis-c6.1 from firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/data/active_fire/, filter to Ethiopia then to within 150 km of the site. No API key needed. The window is ROLLING and was captured on 2026-10-02 covering 25 Sep - 2 Oct; after that date these files no longer reach this event, which is why the subset is stored here. For later work use the FIRMS archive API, which needs a free key.
Upstream sources
["NASA FIRMS / VIIRS and MODIS active fire products"]
Satellite image · 24 Sep 2026
Sentinel-2 true colour centred on the coordinate reported for a destroyed warehouse at Harar Meda, 24 September 07:57Z, two days before the reported strike.
Technical provenance
Captured at
2026-09-24 07:57:38+00:00
Timestamp basis
platform
Licence
Copernicus Sentinel data 2026, processed by ESA. Free and open under the Copernicus licence; redistribution permitted with attribution.
Reproduction procedure
earth-search sentinel-2-l2a S2B_37PDK_20260924_1_L2A, 1.2 km radius on 8.72185, 38.99822
Upstream sources
["Element 84 Earth Search v1 / AWS Open Data sentinel-cogs"]
["earth-search STAC query (sentinel-2-l2a)", "window centred on the reported warehouse coordinate, 1.2 km radius", "windowed read of asset 'visual' at native resolution (EPSG:32637)", "bands 1-3 as RGB", "PNG encode"]
Bbox
[38.987314, 8.71107, 39.009126, 8.73263]
Crs
EPSG:4326
Resolution m
10.0
Cloud cover pct
7.13
License
Copernicus Sentinel data 2026, processed by ESA. Free and open under the Copernicus licence; redistribution permitted with attribution.
Redistributable
True
Detectability note
Sentinel-2 true colour at ten metres per pixel over a 2.4 km box centred on the coordinate an open-source analyst gave for a destroyed warehouse. The burn-ratio test behind this pair uses the 20 m shortwave infrared bands, which is the standard method for finding burn scars and far more sensitive to them than true colour. At that sampling a warehouse is one or two samples. This pair can show a burn area of roughly thirty metres or more, a collapsed large structure, or aircraft moved off an apron. It cannot resolve a single damaged building, and a null in it says nothing about what finer imagery shows.
Satellite image · 1 Oct 2026
The same window on 1 October 07:57Z, five days after the reported strike, with almost no cloud. Published alongside a burn-ratio test of the same scenes.
Technical provenance
Captured at
2026-10-01 07:57:52+00:00
Timestamp basis
platform
Licence
Copernicus Sentinel data 2026, processed by ESA. Free and open under the Copernicus licence; redistribution permitted with attribution.
Reproduction procedure
earth-search sentinel-2-l2a S2A_37PDK_20261001_0_L2A, 1.2 km radius on 8.72185, 38.99822
Upstream sources
["Element 84 Earth Search v1 / AWS Open Data sentinel-cogs"]
["earth-search STAC query (sentinel-2-l2a)", "window centred on the reported warehouse coordinate, 1.2 km radius", "windowed read of asset 'visual' at native resolution (EPSG:32637)", "bands 1-3 as RGB", "PNG encode"]
Bbox
[38.987314, 8.71107, 39.009126, 8.73263]
Crs
EPSG:4326
Resolution m
10.0
Cloud cover pct
0.12
License
Copernicus Sentinel data 2026, processed by ESA. Free and open under the Copernicus licence; redistribution permitted with attribution.
Redistributable
True
Detectability note
Sentinel-2 true colour at ten metres per pixel over a 2.4 km box centred on the coordinate an open-source analyst gave for a destroyed warehouse. The burn-ratio test behind this pair uses the 20 m shortwave infrared bands, which is the standard method for finding burn scars and far more sensitive to them than true colour. At that sampling a warehouse is one or two samples. This pair can show a burn area of roughly thirty metres or more, a collapsed large structure, or aircraft moved off an apron. It cannot resolve a single damaged building, and a null in it says nothing about what finer imagery shows.
