In Sudan, residents began fleeing the southwestern city of Kadugli Thursday as a new front opened between Sudan’s army and the rebel group known as the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North. Sudan’s army says fighters with the group broke a long-standing ceasefire agreement this week and attacked Sudanese military units.

In the capital Khartoum, heavy fighting continues between Sudan’s army and the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Elsewhere, activists say they’ve identified 500 bodies across the city of El Geneina, the capital of Sudan’s western Darfur region. Witnesses say thousands more bodies remain uncollected in the city’s streets, after paramilitaries and allied Arab militias stepped up attacks on non-Arab residents of the region. Aid workers say tens of thousands of people fleeing the violence for neighboring Chad have also faced the threat of violence and sexual assault. Laura Lo Castro, the U.N. Refugee Agency’s representative in Chad, spoke to refugees who survived the journey.

Laura Lo Castro: “They described terrifying scenes in which everyone had to flee for their lives. There were massacres. And as they fled, they sometimes, unfortunately, had to leave behind little children who couldn’t run, people who were injured and the elderly.”