Satellite image shows three Il-76 cargo planes at Harar Meda air base after UAE flights, analyst says


Satellite image of Harar Meda Airbase in Bishoftu, Ethiopia, with three large Il-76 cargo aircraft parked on the apron

Satellite imagery that AfriMEOSINT said was captured on October 19, 2026, showing at least three Il-76TD cargo aircraft at Harar Meda Airbase in Bishoftu. (Image: AfriMEOSINT via X)

At least three Il-76 cargo planes were parked at Ethiopia's Harar Meda air base on Monday after arriving from the United Arab Emirates, according to an open source analyst who shared satellite imagery.

Rich Tedd, who tracks military flights and conflicts in East Africa on the AfriMEOSINT account, wrote on X that "satellite imagery captured today shows at least three Il-76TD cargo aircraft at Harar Meda Airbase in Ethiopia, following their arrival from the UAE." He called it "this unusually high level of activity at the base" and linked it to the war in Tigray and to what he described as "Ethiopia's growing role in Sudan's war." The image he posted shows three large four engine aircraft on the apron at the base in Bishoftu, about 45 kilometers southeast of Addis Ababa.

In a follow up post, Tedd said the three Il-76TDs were likely Vise Air's 7Q-VAF and 7Q-VZZ and Aviacon Zitotrans' RA-78765, which he said left Al Ain Airport in the UAE on October 16, 17 and 18 "and have yet to return." On Monday evening he reported that a Pecotox-Air Boeing 747-409F freighter, registered ER-MAM, flew from Al Ain to Addis Ababa's Bole Airport, and that another Vise Air Il-76TD, 7Q-VAA, had left Al Ain heading towards East Africa, "likely bound for Ethiopia."

Tedd's account has posted a run of flight tracks into Ethiopia this month. Early on Monday he wrote that a Boeing 737 passenger plane chartered by the UAE government, registered UR-CQX and operated by YanAir, "apparently visited N'Djamena before being tracked yesterday heading towards Addis Ababa," before it returned to Abu Dhabi. Later on Monday he reported that two Boeing 747 freighters of Moldova's Fly Pro Airlines flew from Shanghai to Al Safran Airbase in the UAE, and that he had tracked "at least 12 direct cargo flights" since September between Shanghai and that base, "that hosts Wing Loong II UCAVs," a Chinese made armed drone. On Sunday he had reported an Antonov An-124 heavy lifter flying from Al Reef Airbase in Abu Dhabi to Mombasa and then on to Ethiopia, with Harar Meda its "likely destination."

None of this shows what the planes carried. The regional analysis account Middle East Brief wrote on Monday that if the presence of three Il-76s at Harar Meda is confirmed, "its significance would go beyond a routine transport movement, as the base is the center of Ethiopia's air power." But it cautioned that "the current information alone does not establish that the shipments are military in nature or directly linked to the northern front."

Adulis News, which downloaded a week of public Flightradar24 records, reported that between October 9 and 16 six Il-76 jets of three companies made 18 flights on one southern route out of airfields in the UAE, four of them recorded inside Ethiopian airspace. The planes carry registrations from Malawi, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic, the site said, and their last recorded positions on the inbound flights were about 320 to 360 kilometers from Addis Ababa and Bishoftu. "Nothing in a flight track shows what a plane carries, and we have no evidence that these flights carried weapons," Adulis News wrote. The UAE has rejected past accusations over its role in the region's wars.

Ethiopia’s Government has not commented publicly on the Harar Meda imagery.

Mereja Media has asked the Government Communication Service to confirm or deny the cargo flights to Harar Meda.

Sources

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