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
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