I recognised my sister in video of refugees captured in Sudan war

BBC | Mihret Gebru was recently watching with concern two viral videos on her phone which showed people from the Horn of Africa being beaten and assaulted by armed men in Sudan - and was then horrified to spot her sister among the captives.

“Instantly I was able to identify Luwam, who is wearing the orange scarf I know very well - and her shoes, which can be partly seen,” she told the BBC.

The sisters are from Eritrea - and like many young people Luwam Gebru had fled the country’s indefinite military conscription that they feel denies them a future.

She had ended up in neighbouring Ethiopia in 2019, where she had refugee status. But being a refugee can be like living a life in limbo - and many choose to make dangerous journeys in search of new lives and opportunities.

Ms Mihret said her 24-year-old sibling had decided to risk traversing the war zone of Sudan to reach Libya last year, several months after the conflict erupted.

Sudan descended into chaos in April 2023 when former allies - the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) - began fighting each other for control of the country.

Many foreign nationals were hastily evacuated - but some refugees already in the country and recently arrived migrants like Ms Luwam found themselves treated with suspicion and taken as prisoners of war.

“We didn’t hear her voice for almost a month,” says Ms Mihret.

“She had called once from Sudan and told us: ‘Don’t worry I have arrived in Sudan safely and we might reach Libya this week.’”

Her younger sister sounded confident that the people smugglers she had entrusted with her life would not let her down.

But nothing was heard of her for another five months - until the videos appeared on social media in April.

BBC Verify’s analysis of the footage suggests they were uploaded on 7 and 8 April.

A Sudanese army general refers to the 50 or so detainees on board a truck as “mercenaries from Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia”.

They appear to have been captured fleeing fierce fighting around the al-Jaily oil refinery, north of the capital, Khartoum, which has been in the hands of the RSF and is used as a base in the area.

In one of the videos, an army officer says the captives are being transferred to the army's Wadi Seidna military base, which is also north of the capital.

There have been unsubstantiated reports that foreign fighters are being used by the RSF - which may explain the hostility to the group from the army officers.

Still photos of the group, including several with Ms Luwam in her orange scarf, show them crammed into a room in a warehouse.

Ms Mihret, who was also able to identify one of her neighbours from Eritrea among the group, said they have not been able to get any more information.

“We don’t know much, we are told they are under the custody of the Sudanese authorities.”

Other Eritreans have told the BBC they have relatives registered as refugees in Sudan who have gone missing and are reportedly being held by the Sudanese military.

Two of them left Eritrea together last year, arriving at a UN-run refugee camp in Kassala state in eastern Sudan in October.

Their families say that Yonatan Tesfaslassie, aged 17, and Edmon Kidane, 20, were then approached by smugglers.

Such traffickers, some of whom are alleged to be from the RSF, often target the young and newly arrived promising them a safe route out of Sudan for a fee.

Once en route they put pressure on them to ask relatives abroad to pay more money and then abandon them on the way.

In Mr Yonatan’s and Mr Edmon’s case, they were aiming for South Sudan when it seems they were abandoned by the smugglers and became separated.

It appears they had both made it to Wad Madani, in Gezira state, a city about 190km (118 miles) south of Khartoum that had been a safe-haven for many since the start of the war.

But in December it fell to RSF troops and more than 300,000 fled the area in the chaos.

That was the last time Mr Yonatan’s family heard from him – when he said he was setting out with other migrants towards South Sudan.

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