内容摘要："They were all fabulous. Keld was amazing. There's so many plans to come back and visit all these communities and spend more time in them.

"They were all fabulous. Keld was amazing. There's so many plans to come back and visit all these communities and spend more time in them.

"They were about 300m [984ft] into the water when their boat overturned, resulting in the deaths of seven people."Hiyab's sister survived by clinging to the sinking boat until another vessel - also operated by the smugglers - came to the rescue.

Ms Senait blamed the smugglers for the deaths, saying they overloaded the boat with more than 20 migrants."The cause of deaths was plain negligence. They put too many people in a small boat that couldn't even carry five people," she said.During the BBC's visit to Lomewki, two fishermen said they saw the bodies of migrants - believed to be Eritreans - floating in the lake, which is around 300km (186 miles) long and 50km wide, in July 2024.

"There were about four bodies on the shores. Then, a few days later other bodies appeared," Brighton Lokaala said.Another fisherman, Joseph Lomuria, said he saw the bodies of two men and two women - one of whom appeared to be a teenager.

In June 2024, the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, recorded 345,000 Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers in East Africa, out of 580,000 globally.

Like Ms Senait's family, many flee to avoid military conscription in a country that has been embroiled in numerous wars in the region, and where free political and religious activity is not tolerated as the government tries to keep a tight grip on power.But many observers believe there is a danger that Sudan will drift into de-facto partition, with the two warring parties and their backers entrenching themselves in their zones of influence.

The RSF is working to set up a parallel government in areas it controls, gathering allied groups to sign a political charter and constitution last month in Nairobi.Its intention was to show that despite battlefield setbacks, it remains a potent force - and that its desire to take control of the country remains undimmed.

Sudan's people have borne the brunt of this brutal civil war, which has inflicted massive death, destruction, and human rights violations on civilians.The United Nations has described the situation in the country as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. More than 12 million people have been forced to flee their homes and millions face acute food shortages, with parts of the country driven into famine.