KHARTOUM — Millions who returned to Sudan’s capital after the army retook the city are finding it barely livable, with chronic power and water cuts, scarce medicine and vast war damage, AFP reported Sunday.
About four million people fled Khartoum after fighting between the army and the Rapid Support Forces erupted in 2023. An estimated 2.7 million have since returned, but electricity and water still fail for days at a time, markets reopen amid mass unemployment, and by June the U.N. had declared only about 1% of the city safe because of booby traps and unexploded ordnance. Fighting continues elsewhere in Darfur, Kordofan and Blue Nile.
Authorities have pressed residents and university students to come back and reopened the airport for domestic flights, but many who can afford to stay abroad are doing so. “Bringing my family back was a mistake,” one businessman told AFP near a city centre still lined with blackened, bombed-out buildings.
Sources: AFP via France 24
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