Sudan’s military says it has repelled an attack by the rival Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group on the government’s last stronghold in the West Kordofan region. The fighting came as the UAE-backed RSF pushes further east after seizing most of Sudan’s Darfur region, where human rights groups say they carried out mass atrocities including rape and summary executions. On Monday, the U.N.’s humanitarian chief urged immediate and unhindered access for aid agencies as civilians continue to flee the besieged city of El Fasher. Tens of thousands of city residents remain unaccounted for. Survivors who escaped El Fasher are mostly women, many of whom were separated from male relatives who were shot or whose fate remains unknown.

Nazik Abdelrahman: “There’s no tent where you’ll find women saying their husbands came with them, except for the elderly men. … But a young man, it would be impossible for him to leave.”

The U.N. says more than two-and-a-half years of civil war in Sudan has left more than 150,000 people dead; about 12 million have been forced from their homes.