The Bahri Teaching Hospital in the capital's north was stormed by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in April 2023, soon after fighting broke out between the RSF and Sudan's army.

Bahri remained a war zone until an army counteroffensive pushed through Khartoum last year, recapturing the area from the RSF in March.

"We never thought the hospital would reopen," said Dr Ali Mohamed Ali, delighted to be back in his old surgical ward.

"It was completely destroyed, there was nothing left," he told AFP. "We had to start from scratch."

Ali fled north from Khartoum in the early days of the war, working in a makeshift medical camp with "no gloves, no instruments and no disinfectant".

According to the World Health Organization, the conflict has forced the shutdown of more than two-thirds of Sudan's health facilities and caused a world record number of deaths from attacks on healthcare infrastructure.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed across Sudan since the war began, while 11 million have been left displaced, triggering the world's largest hunger crisis.

But with the RSF now driven out of Khartoum, Sudan's army-backed government is gradually returning and the devastated city is starting to rebuild.

Around 40 of Khartoum's 120 hospitals, shut during the war, have resumed operations, according to the Sudan Doctors' Network, a local medical group.

- 'In ruins' -

The Bahri Teaching Hospital, which before the conflict treated around 800 patients a day in its emergency department, was repeatedly attacked and looted.

"All the equipment was stolen," said director Galal Mostafa, adding that about 70 percent of its buildings were damaged and the power system was destroyed.

"We were fortunate to receive two transformers just days ago," said Salah al-Haj, the hospital's chief executive.

During the first five days of fighting, Al-Haj -- an affable man with a sharp grey moustache -- was trapped inside one wing of the hospital.

"We couldn't leave because of the heavy gunfire," he told AFP, saying that anyone "who stepped outside risked being detained and beaten" by the RSF.

Patients were rushed to safety in dangerous transfers to hospitals away from the fighting across the Nile.

"Vehicles had to take very complicated routes to evacuate patients safely, avoiding shells and bullets," Al-Haj said.

On April 15, 2023, as the first shots rang out in the capital, RSF fighters seized Ali on his way into surgery.

They held him for two weeks at Soba, an RSF-run detention centre in southern Khartoum whose former inmates have shared testimony of torture and inhumane conditions.

"When I was released, the country was in ruins," he said.

Hospitals were "destroyed, streets devastated and homes looted. There was nothing left."

Almost three years on, taxis now drop patients at the hospital's entrance, while new ambulances sit parked in a courtyard that until recently was strewn with rubble and overgrown weeds.

Inside, refurbished corridors smell of fresh paint.

The renovations and new equipment were funded by the Sudanese American Physicians Association and Islamic Relief USA at a cost of more than $2 million, according to the association.

Services have resumed in newly fitted emergency, surgical, obstetrics and gynaecology rooms.

Doctors, nurses and administrators hustle through the halls, the administrators fretting over covering salaries and running costs.

"Now it's much better than before the war," said Hassan Alsahir, a 25-year-old intern in the emergency department.

"It wasn't this clean before, and we were short on beds -- sometimes patients had to sleep on the floor."

On its first day reopened, the hospital received a patient from the Kordofan region -- the war's current major battleground -- for urgent surgery.

"The operation went well," said Ali.