Displaced Sudanese return to Khartoum after months of conflict

Nearly a year after Sudan's army regained control of the capital from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), residents are slowly returning to a city battered by months of urban warfare, even as vast rebuilding challenges remain.

In a quiet neighborhood of Khartoum, 29-year-old photographer Hassan Gamal Aldeen strolls with a friend to a modest roadside cafe, a stripped-down structure furnished with plastic chairs.

It's not much of a cafe by city standards but after nearly three years of conflict, residents have learned to adapt.

Aldeen recalls the early days of the conflict, when he and fellow journalists were trapped in their office.

"At the beginning of the conflict, we were trapped in our office during Ramadan. On the first, second, and third days, we were without water and electricity. We were surviving on a tiny amount of water, measuring it by the gram because there were five of us journalists, and we had no idea what would happen to us. In that place, we were under the constant threat of dying from thirst, hunger, or stray bullets. After the third day, I told the journalists we had to leave the office because if we stayed any longer, we would die right there."

He says he was later arrested by RSF fighters and detained for a month before being released. Aldeen fled to Port Sudan, where he spent months in displacement, before responding to a government call encouraging residents to return to Khartoum.

What awaited him, he says, was a city transformed by conflict.

"The city's landmarks have changed entirely. Life stopped for three years. When I arrived in Khartoum, I felt lost. This isn't the city I knew. This isn't the Khartoum where I was born and raised."

While more than a million people have returned, that figure represents only a portion of Khartoum's pre-war population of nearly four million. Entire neighborhoods remain damaged, and basic infrastructure, from water and electricity to health facilities, is still severely degraded.

The United Nations estimates that rehabilitating Khartoum's essential infrastructure will cost at least $350 million. Reconstruction efforts have begun, but questions remain over funding, security and how quickly a city scarred by prolonged conflict can recover.

Edited by CGTN Africa reporter Marion Gachuhi