SUDAN’S el-Fasher is a “crime scene,” the UN has warned after accessing the largely deserted city for the first time since it was seized by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in October.

Unicef, the UN children’s agency, also warned of an unprecedented level of child malnutrition in North Darfur.

It called for urgent access to children and families trapped by the fighting between the Sudanese army and the RSF, and amid reports of ethnically motivated mass killings, widespread detentions and systematic looting.

The warnings come amid intensified clashes as the paramilitary force continues to push east after taking control of el-Fasher on October 26.

International aid workers visited the city on Friday, following weeks of negotiations, and found few residents remaining in what was once a densely populated urban centre, hosting large numbers of displaced people.

More than 100,000 residents fled after the RSF seized the city.

Denise Brown of the UN in Sudan said staff who entered the city were able to see “very few people” during their hours-long visit.

Those who remained were sheltering in empty buildings or under basic plastic sheets, with a small market operating that sold only locally grown vegetables.

“We have photos of people, and you can see clearly on their faces the accumulation of fatigue, of stress, of anxiety, of loss,” Ms Brown told Reuters.

Unicef said that 53 per cent of 500 children screened this month in the Um Baru locality were acutely malnourished.

One in six were suffering from severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition that can kill within weeks if untreated.

A recent report by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab described a systematic RSF effort to erase evidence of mass killings through burial, burning and removal of human remains.

Satellite imagery showed that by late November, 72 per cent of clusters consistent with human remains had shrunk, while 38 per cent were no longer visible.

More than 200 people, including women and children, were killed on ethnic grounds by the RSF during a recent offensive near the Chad border, according to the Sudan Doctors Network.

The visit to el-Fasher came as UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres renewed calls for an immediate ceasefire, as an estimated 30.4 million Sudanese now require humanitarian assistance.