KHARTOUM, Sudan — Children are playing again on the streets of Khartoum.
They ride bikes through eerie streets, with the freedom of deserted roads and highways.
In the backdrop, people sweep shattered glass from battered storefronts, or clear rubble from their homes.
A handful of stands serve tea and coffee on the roadside and the owner of a popular bakery has returned after two years and is selling bread again.
These are some of the early signs of revival emerging across Khartoum, as it slowly comes back to life.
In March, after months of intense fighting, the Sudanese army recaptured the war-torn capital from the warring Rapid Support Forces who occupied it during the war. The group inflicted widespread abuse and brutality on the tiny population that remained, sparking an outpouring of relief when the army retook it.
But now the city is a shell of itself.
The capital of Sudan was once a bustling, diverse metropolis — one of Africa's most populous cities, with 6 million people.
Skyscrapers towered over a hazy, Saharan landscape — a vibrant melting pot of modernist and historical sites and structures, situated on a confluence of the Nile River. Bougainvillea draped over walls and doorways, vehicles and donkey carts filled traffic, busy restaurants lined the river banks.
But the war between the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces turned the capital and the wider country into a battlefield. The conflict that has created the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe, according to the U.N.
In Khartoum, street after street lies in ruins, lined with skeletal apartment blocks and broken storefronts.
The facade of the 200-year-old presidential palace was torched and destroyed in the fierce battles to control the seat of power in Sudan.
Burnt-out vehicles litter the grounds of the University of Khartoum, with academic papers and ammunition strewn across the lawn.
Markets, cinemas, restaurants, cafes, sites once bright with life have been crushed by the battles.
The RSF — widely held to be backed and armed by the United Arab Emirates — occupied Khartoum for two years, inflicting abuse, torture and sexual violence on the tiny population that remained. Then a month ago, the Sudanese Armed Forces drove the paramilitary group out of the capital – a major turning point in the war.
A broken city
NPR visited Khartoum the month after the army retook it and amid the destruction, witnessing early shoots of life and revival.
Some suburbs and areas on the outskirts of the city are becoming vibrant again, its markets filling with traders selling groceries.
But the toll of war is evident. Aid trucks from U.N. agencies were driving through the city; the U.N. says that the famine in Sudan is the worst anywhere in the world for decades.
An intermittent soundscape of bombs echoed in the backdrop. "Suicide drones" deployed by the RSF are occasionally striking targets in Khartoum but increasingly in the Khartoum State region and other cities.
A trickle of the millions displaced from Khartoum return each day. But swaths of the city are still unlivable. There's a shortage of water, no power and virtually no state services.
And the relative freedom in the city has not extended to everyone. According to local human rights groups, the army and allied forces have arrested hundreds people suspected of ties to the RSF — and at least dozens have been killed. The abuses have sparked outrage and fear among South Sudanese nationals and marginalized groups in Khartoum, seen as having ties to RSF, who have recruited mercenaries from South Sudan. The Sudanese army said it was investigating reported abuses.
Similar abuses are being reported in army controlled areas across Sudan. In Um Bada, an area recently retaken by the Sudanese army that's close to Khartoum, NPR witnessed six blindfolded young men under arrest, walking single file into a residence where the army was based. When asked about who they were and why they were blind-folded the army refused to comment.
A looted capital
Compounding the immense damage from the conflict is the immense scale of looting by the RSF over the past two years.
Yusuf Aldy's family owned a bakery in Khartoum and his family lived on the three floors above it. When he returned in April, he found combat clothing belonging to RSF fighters in his home while most of his family possessions were missing, including TVs, video games, air conditioners and light fixtures.
But the business was largely intact. "When I came back, the neighbors told us the RSF were actually running the bakery," he says. "They kept it open and sold bread for some months."
Virtually everything of value was stripped from many homes and businesses across the city: from jewelry to water pipes and metal roofs. Electric cables were ripped from the walls and dug from the ground in Aldy's home and in virtually every occupied building, stripped for copper. Heaps of plastic wiring have been dumped across the city.
"It could be up to one million tons (of copper) stolen from Khartoum," said Altyeb Saad, a spokesperson for the Khartoum State government. The theft has meant much of the city has been plunged into darkness. "It is a crime on the people of Sudan. It is clear they want to destroy this country."
An assault on history
Even Sudan's treasures were pillaged. The national museum in central Khartoum held close to 100,000 artifacts, dating back more than 4,500 years: mummies, sacred instruments and ancient tools from the Islamic, Christian and Meroitic eras of Sudanese history.
Most of it was taken — or vandalized. The arms of towering granite statues of Nubian royalty at the entrance to the museum were hacked off. Containers holding thousands of artifacts in storage were torched.
Archives and documents in the administrative block were raided and trashed. NPR saw several offices and rooms where it appeared that RSF fighters had defecated before they left.
Musa Elfadul is an archaeological researcher who's worked at the museum for 27 years. "I cannot describe how important and precious these items are, because without our history, what do we have?" he says.
School and hospitals turned into torture chambers
The RSF's occupation of Khartoum was defined by its brutality. Hospitals were sacked and shut down, meaning untold numbers suffered due to a lack of medical treatment. Emergency Response Rooms, a grassroots network of activists providing vital support (and who were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year), became a lifeline but often was powerless, said Duaa Tariq, an activist in the network. "We lost so many people because we couldn't access the most basic medicines. It was so, so heartbreaking because so many deaths were so easily preventable."
Residents report they were regularly robbed or beaten by fighters who mounted checkpoints across Khartoum. The group committed systemic and widespread sexual violence on women and girls, according to the U.N. and several rights groups, the immense toll of which is not yet known. "When they came into an area, the pattern was first they would abuse everyone," Tariq said. "So that's rape and sexual violence on women, then the men would be arrested and beaten." The RSF did not respond to requests from NPR and have denied accusations of sexual abuse in Sudan as "fabricated."
The Sudanese army said schools, hospitals and businesses around the capital were repurposed into detention centers. Most were filled with men accused of being affiliated to the Sudanese army, were tortured and killed.
Munir Jelabi, a 24-year-old whom NPR met at a military hospital ward in Khartoum, barely survived. After weeks of treatment his body is still skeletal, bones bulging through his skin.
He said he was arrested by the RSF over a year ago while buying food at a market in Khartoum and accused of being a soldier for the Sudanese army. He was taken to the Soba prison complex in Khartoum, which the RSF turned into its main detention center.
Jelabi said his cell was packed with dozens of people who were routinely whipped and tortured. "They only gave us a small glass of lentils and a small glass of water each day," he said. Some days we received nothing." He said many of the inmates suffered from diarrhea and became too weak to go to the toilet. When they died, the bodies were left in the cell for days.
"I thought to myself that I would never see outside the prison," he said.
Jelabi was freed in April, after the Sudanese army took over the city.
Rebuilding Khartoum
A government analysis assessing what it will take to rebuild Khartoum is underway, said Altyeb Saad, a spokesperson for the Khartoum State government. " This will take so much, so much because Khartoum was built over more than 200 years," he said. The city was established just over two centuries ago.
Much of the public infrastructure has suffered major damage. "The water station was built before 1930. This was destroyed," Saad said. The theft of tons of electric cables has meant power reconstruction will be a huge task.
"Solar is what we're considering now because it will be very hard to replace all the cables," he added. Officials are also assessing the status of many buildings feared to be on the verge of collapse. "It will take billions and billions of dollars, no question," Saad said, on the immense cost of reconstruction, adding Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and China have all committed to help rebuild the capital.
Reviving the city's broken medical system is also an urgent priority. All of the 37 public hospitals in Khartoum have been severely damaged and looted, Saad said. Most of the roughly 60 private health care facilities suffered a similar fate. The collapse has heaped pressure on medical facilities in the neighbouring city of Omdurman, across the Nile.
In Khartoum, a major effort to clear the city is underway. Teams tread carefully on foot, searching for unexploded bombs. Tractors follow behind them, clearing the streets of shell casings and debris. But for now, the work only scratches the surface.
The rising threat of drone strikes overshadows hopes for major reconstruction, undermining its prospects before it can begin. Yet many continue in earnest, determined to rebuild their lives.
63-year-old Ahmed Uduma gradually clears pieces of mortar and piles of debris from his battered home, the house his father built in Khartoum in 1972. His family escaped to Port Sudan at the start of the war but he refused to leave.
He spent months sheltering in his living room as bullets and shrapnel punctured the walls and windows, grazing his knees and face and almost killing him. Much of the house, a modestly sized brick bungalow, suffered heavy damage, but the structure remains intact.
"Now we are rebuilding it, inshallah," he said. "We will get there."
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