Nearly 400,000 Sudanese have returned to their homes over the past two and a half months after being displaced by the ongoing conflict, the United Nations migration agency said on Monday.
Between December and March, “approximately 396,738 individuals” returned to areas retaken from paramilitary forces by the army, which has advanced through central Sudan in recent months, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Since April 2023, Sudan has been locked in a brutal conflict between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Nearly all of the returnees moved back to their homes in the central Sudanese states of Sennar, which the army largely recaptured in December, as well as al-Jazira after it was retaken the following month.
Thousands more have returned to the capital Khartoum, where the army last month regained large areas, and appeared on the verge of expelling the RSF.