THREAD: This investigation took up most of my 2025 to produce, and it was published in this weekend's edition of @thecontinent newspaper.
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THREAD: This investigation took up most of my 2025 to produce, and it was published in this weekend's edition of @thecontinent newspaper.
On January 30 2025, a Djiboutian drone strike was carried out. Djibouti's government claimed it had attacked armed rebels in its own territory.
7 months of work reveals that it was actually a civilian massacre in neighbouring Ethiopia. The bloodshed and coverup implicating Djibouti, Ethiopia, France and Turkey & how international media got it all wrong.
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The East African state of Djibouti, located off the Gulf of Aden and a neighbouring state of Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia...wasn't known for its use of drones.
When the news emerged on social media of a drone strike possibly from Djibouti, conflicting reports immediately emerged as to who was targeted, and even where the strike occurred. It was hard to separate rumour from fact.
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As the rumours continued to make the rounds, on February 1st, Djibouti's Ministry of Defence put out a communique acknowledging that it had carried out a drone strike on January 30. It claimed to have neutralized eight "terrorists" in a strike at the Addorta locality, some 6km from the Ethiopian border. Djiboutian officials later confirmed that they were referring to rebels from the FRUD (Front pour la Restauration de l'Unité et de la Démocratie) a Djiboutian rebel group active since the 90ies.
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The statement went on to say that the Djiboutian government acknowledges that among the dead armed militants, some civilians were "collateral damage" (yes, that horrible euphemism was actually used), and went on to state that assistance for affected victims was already dispatched.
The Djiboutian government also stated that an investigation was underway to determine how civilians victims were caught in the targeted strike against FRUD fighters.
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Meanwhile...on the exact same day, Ethiopian media began reporting the exact opposite: a Djiboutian drone strike did take place, but not at Addorta in Djibouti, but on the other side of the border, in Ethiopia. Addis Standard (where I learned my trade) reported that the dead were all civilians and members of the pastoralist Afar people, an ethnic group inhabiting both countries.
It all added to the confusion, with the contrasting narratives, claims and counterclaims.
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The facts weren't immediately clear and verifying them was a difficult task. Much of the Ethiopian-Djiboutian border area is underdeveloped, sparsely populated, remote, mountainous terrain with extremely hot temperatures and inaccessible by road. Communities of ethnic Afar pastoralists crisscross the border areas in search of water for goats and camels, and the free press is cracked down upon heavily in both countries.
Sending someone out there was unthinkable.
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Djibouti identified a time and place where it said it killed rebels, while providing no evidence.
Ethiopian media, identified the strike location as somewhere on the Ethiopian side of the border, citing accounts of victims.
Many looked towards international media coverage to hopefully bring some clarity to the matter.
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But international media coverage of the event, was well and truly woeful.
Outlets like the RFI, AFP, and the now defunct VOA...simply echoed the Djiboutian version of events, making no effort to corroborate conflicting claims or reach out to victims. The only person quoted in most stories, was Alexis Mohamed, an advisor to the Djiboutian President.
Here is sample coverage from Radio France International
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If there's one thing that genocide in Gaza taught me about media, it's that narratives can be intentionally concealed, with choice of headline, selective quoting, & how deep past the lede they're buried.
While we still didn't have facts...there was significant doubt over the Djiboutian story. But as you can see...prominent media washed over the doubts, boosted the claims that the dead were militants or terrorists, and either excluded claims of human suffering, or buried them into irrelevance.
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Between March and May, I spoke at length with eyewitnesses, two survivors and locals familiar with the Afar region.
The strike took place at night, and panicked locals fled the scene. The next day, they came back to collect remaining bodies of victims still there. When they did, a few captured scenes like this, of young men collecting a body of a victim from the scene. Photos and videos began to emerge.
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On February 4th, the Djiboutian Human Rights League (LDDH), an exiled Djiboutian organization that investigates abuses, produced their own findings, naming and identifying all the victims as civilians, and identifying the site of the atrocity as the Ethiopian Siyaru locality.
There were no follow up reports in international media documenting the fact that Ethiopian journalists and Djiboutian human rights researchers all had findings that suggested that the official version was wrong.
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Then this footage surfaced. This is Ali Orbis, who lost both of his sons in the strike. He is seen telling an unidentified cameraman about his losses, standing near the scene where young men were collecting the remains of victims were seen. He names both of his sons, who are listed in the LDDH's communique.
Mounting victim accounts, gruesome photographs, the LDDH's findings, the suspicious silence from Ethiopia...began to point to a coverup.
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This young man's eyewitness testimony also appeared. All were captured the same day, February 1st, a day after the drone strike.
After about a week, newer footage like this showing locals talking about the strike stopped emerging. Djiboutian authorities began intimidating families, and gradually, the strike stopped trending in East African circles.
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Nevertheless...the limited footage was helpful. Multiple sources identified the location as within the immediate vicinity of the strike zone, with one survivor estimating it to be "100 or 150 meters behind where the men speaking on camera are seen standing." This was supported by the fact that men are seen collecting bodies from this location, suggesting they were lying nearby.
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All of the eyewitness, media and human rights researcher reporters, identified the location of the massacre as being the Siyaru locality in Ethiopia, straddling the border with Djibouti. But Siyaru itself is vast, remote, underdeveloped and stretches at some points as far as 50km. There are few identifying structures and no names of subregions that can help pinpoint a possible location.
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Local expertise helps though. While there are no major monuments, roads, buildings or distinguishable structures that one could use to canvass the region via satellite imagery...speaking with Afar locals helped me identify prominent mountain peaks, and also taught me about what they use to navigate the area: soil colour among other things.
For months, I had wondered what these wierd circular shapes in the ground were. They are called "Oguh" I'm told, and serve to protect goats from hyenas.
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Eventually...I managed to identify a number of mountains..including the impressive Mount Mousa Ali, which unites the borders of three countries here: 12°28'07.1"N 42°24'15.5"E.
From there, eyewitnesses used their memory and knowledge of the area to guide me on a map southwards to Siyaru...and specific areas identified by numbers of huts, nomad tents and sheet metal structures.
With this critical guidance...I narrowed down the area with the potential massacre location.
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I stitched together a bunch of screenshots from the 26 second video I uploaded earlier showing locals collecting a body. As the cameraman panned back and forth, the stitched image revealed the layout of the larger area...the foot of mountains, a road, a few Oguhs and a sheet metal roof structure. While these structures are ubiquitous here...finding one in front of the exact mountain ridge pattern seen here, would almost certainly identify this location.
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From here, it was manual labour, including following pathways through the mountains on Google Earth, and canvassing mountains for chains of peaks that resemble those that we uncovered by stitching screenshots on Microsoft Paint together.
The Peakvisor app (https://peakvisor.com/) is an incredible topography tool for identifying peaks and mountain ridges. The app helped me land a consisten match...sometime in June.
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Peakvisor helped identify the mountains, and eventually the location where the footage was captured. The peak encircled in orange, appears not far from where the men were standing. It is actually the 4000ft+ tall Mount Sasakle peak, 8km away in Djibouti. But it's visible in Ethiopia.
After finding the location, using satellite imagery, one could find a match for the protective hut structures and even the road the men in the footage were seen walking along.
