PHOTO ESSAY: Sudan’s capital eases to life again after 3 years of war

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Khartoum has become a kind of ghost town after three years of war. Children wander through an amusement park in the shadow of some of the Sudanese capital’s most well-known buildings, now reduced to shells after attacks.

The ground is littered with bullet casings, shrapnel and unexploded weapons. The threat of a return to fighting remains as conflict continues elsewhere in the vast country between Sudan’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Khartoum’s streets are lined with improvised graveyards, now being exhumed by volunteers. Some of their remains are known, but thousands of the dead are unidentified.

For those searching for missing loved ones, hope may lie in the morgue database of Al Nao Hospital, the only one in Khartoum’s sister city of Omdurman that remained operational while the capital was under RSF control. The hospital, bombed several times, still treats the wounded, including a girl who lost an eye.

Since the military retook control in Khartoum last year, authorities have encouraged people to return and reclaim some normality.