Khartoum (state) and November. The 2008 population census estimates the population of Khartoum state to be about 5,274,321 capita, composed of various tribes of the Sudan. The population is 79% urban, and 74% of the state's population reported their region of origin to be outside Khartoum. The areas of Omdurman and the rural South are inhabited by the tribe of Gamowia, as well as by the Kordofani tribes displaced to these areas by the drought and desertification that hit their areas in the early- and mid-1980s. These are the tribes of the Kababish and the Kawahla. In the northern countryside of Karari
Siege of Khartoum support of the Mahdi, and cut the Egyptian traffic on the Nile and the telegraph to Cairo. Communications were not entirely cut, as runners could still get through, but the siege had begun and Khartoum could only rely on its own food stores, which could last five or six months. On 16 March an abortive sortie from Khartoum was launched, which led to the death of 200 Egyptian troops as the combined forces besieging Khartoum grew to over 30,000 men. Through the months of April, May, June, and July, Gordon and the garrison dealt with being cut off as food