Sudan's paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo has urged his fighters to press ahead with the conflict after the army said it had regained control of a strategic highway linking Khartoum to El Obeid, as conflict intensifies in the Kordofan region.

In a video message released a day after the army's reported advance, Dagalo told his troops he had "released the reins" to frontline commanders, signaling a possible escalation as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seek to regain lost ground.

The highway is a vital supply corridor connecting the capital to El-Obeid, North Kordofan's largest city, and links army-held central Sudan with the western Darfur region, where the RSF controls large areas.

The United Nations has warned for weeks of the risk of mass atrocities as fighting intensifies around El Obeid. The city is hosting hundreds of thousands of displaced people and facing severe shortages of food, fuel, water.

The conflict between Dagalo and army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan began in April 2023 and has killed an estimated around 200,000 people and displaced millions. The United Nations describes Sudan as the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with nearly 34 million people requiring humanitarian assistance.