Khartoum society, while others settled in large slums at the outskirts of the city. Since the mid-1980s, large numbers of refugees from South Sudan and Darfur fleeing the violence of the Second Sudanese Civil War and Darfur conflict have settled around Khartoum. In 1991, Osama bin Laden purchased a house in the affluent al-Riyadh neighborhood of the city and another in Soba. He lived there until 1996, when he was banished from the country. Following the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, the United States accused bin Laden's al-Qaeda group and, on 20 August, launched cruise missile attacks on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory
Bank of Khartoum Bank Misr's six branches became People's Cooperative Bank. Arab Bank's four branches became Red Sea Bank or Red Sea Commercial Bank (reports differ). Commercial Bank of Ethiopia's one branch became Juba Commercial Bank. National and Grindlays Bank's four branches, which Ottoman Bank had established, became Omdurman Bank. Then in 1973 the government merged Red Sea Bank and People's Cooperative Bank into Omdurman Bank. Eleven years later, Omdurman Bank merged with Juba Commercial Bank to form Unity Bank. In 1993, the government grouped Unity Bank, National Export Import Bank, and Bank of Khartoum into the Khartoum Bank Group. In 2002 the