Siege of Khartoum population of Khartoum was about 34,000. Gordon's plight excited great concern in the British press, and even Queen Victoria intervened on his behalf. The government ordered him to return, but Gordon refused, saying he was honour-bound to defend the city. By July 1884, Gladstone reluctantly agreed to send an expedition to Khartoum. The expedition, led by Sir Garnet Wolseley, took several months to organise and only entered Sudan in January 1885, but by then the situation of the Egyptian garrison and civilians had become desperate, with food supplies running low, many inhabitants dying of hunger and the defenders' morale at
Khartoum government succeeded in beating back the assault. On 23 October 2012, an explosion at the Yarmouk munitions factory killed two people and injured another person. The Sudanese government has claimed that the explosion was the result of an Israeli airstrike. Khartoum is located in the middle of the populated areas in Sudan, at almost the northeast center of the country between 15 and 16 degrees latitude north, and between 31 and 32 degrees longitude east. Khartoum marks the convergence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile, where they join to form the bottom of the leaning-S shape of the