Al Jazeera imagery of a Nyala airport fire predates the Sudan army's announced strikes

TLDR

• Al Jazeera's open-source unit found a large fire beside Nyala airport's main runway on 14 October, cleared by 15 October.¹
• Al Jazeera sees no visible structural damage on 15 October and calls targeting only a possibility.¹
• Both images predate the army's announced strikes of 16 October, which the RSF says hit a market, killing 30.¹²

Al Jazeera's Open Source Unit reports that satellite images show a thick column of black smoke rising from the area around Nyala airport on 14 October 2026, with the smoke gone from the same site in an image taken the next day.¹ Nyala is the capital of South Darfur state in western Sudan and has been held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since October 2023.¹⁴ The unit published its analysis on 17 October, the day after the Sudanese army announced air strikes on RSF command centres in Nyala.¹²

Why it matters: Al Jazeera presents the imagery as matching the army's statement, but both images were captured before Friday 16 October, so they cannot show what the army announced that day, and they do not show the livestock market where the RSF says civilians died.¹²

Driving the news:

• A high-resolution image from Vantor on 14 October shows a large fire at the airport, with a thick black smoke column rising from an ignition point on the bare ground right next to the main runway.¹
• Al Jazeera says the smoke blocked a direct view of the suspected target, but the fire's closeness to the runway suggests a possible strike on equipment, supplies or positions it says are believed to belong to the RSF, which it says uses the airport militarily.¹
• A Planet image on 15 October shows the smoke fully cleared and the fire under control, and Al Jazeera's visual analysis finds no visible structural damage to the main runway, taxiways or key nearby facilities.¹
• From that, Al Jazeera concludes the fire was confined to the bare patch beside the runway and did not extend to the airport's hard infrastructure.¹
• The army said on Friday that its air force carried out strikes on RSF command centres and positions in Nyala, killing dozens of fighters and destroying command centres.¹² The RSF has not confirmed or denied that, according to Al Jazeera's report with AFP.²
• Separately, the RSF said an army drone attack on a busy livestock market killed 30 civilians, including 17 women and five children.² A medical source told Radio Tamazuj that 30 people were killed and 47 wounded, without saying who was responsible.⁴

The big picture: Al Jazeera notes that the airport has military and logistical importance, that the RSF has controlled the city since October 2023, and that there have been repeated reports of air and drone strikes on the airport and its surroundings.¹ It also cites local newspapers reporting suspected air strikes at several sites in Nyala, including around the airport, in August, September and October 2026, after a cargo plane arrived in the city.¹ Al Jazeera does not identify a specific strike as the cause of the 14 October fire.¹

The other side: the story's headline says satellite images reveal traces of Sudanese army raids, while the body describes targeting only as a possibility and the 15 October image as showing no visible structural damage.¹ The army's version and the RSF's version of the 16 October events conflict, and the human rights group Emergency Lawyers said on X that a market was hit on Friday and that the drone was "affiliated" with the army.² The RSF-aligned Tasis coalition has called for an independent investigation, and the army's statement did not address the reported civilian casualties.³⁴

Single-source note: the imagery analysis comes from one outlet, Al Jazeera's Open Source Unit, and no other organisation was found to have published an analysis of the 14 and 15 October images. The other three sources cover the 16 October strikes and do not examine imagery of the airport, so they cannot corroborate the airport findings. The casualty figures come from the RSF, the RSF-aligned Tasis coalition and an anonymous medical source, and have not been independently verified.¹²³⁴