Kassala

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Location of Kassala within Sudan

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Kassala is the capital of the state of Kassala in northeastern Sudan. Its 1993 population was 234,622. It is a railroad hub, market town and famous for its fruit gardens. Kassala's location along the main Khartoum-Port Sudan highway makes it an important trade center.

[edit] History

The city was originally created as a military camp for the Ottoman soldiers of Egyptian viceroy Muhammad Ali in 1840 during his military offensive into Sudan. Kassala was subsequently captured by the Mahdists in 1885, and again by the Italians in 1894. After Italy returned it in 1897, it fell under the purview of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan until Sudanese independence.

Since the 1960s, the city has been the destination of large numbers of Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees fleeing conflict and war. Since the beginning of the Second Sudanese Civil War in the 1980s, it has also been refuge of internally displaced Sudanese fleeing conflicts in the Nuba Mountains, and south and west of the country. About 160,000 of these IDPs settled on the outskirts of the town.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Current status

The Kassala region now has a child mortality rate twice that of the Darfur region^{[citation needed]}. UN staff are not allowed into the area^{[citation needed]}.