The resistance committee for El-Fasher said the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) hit the Dar al-Arqam displacement centre on the grounds of a university.

Bodies remained trapped in underground shelters, the committee said in a statement, describing it as a “massacre” and calling on the international community to intervene.

The local resistance committees are activists who coordinate aid and document atrocities in the Sudan conflict.

The RSF has been at war with the regular army since April 2023.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and pushed nearly 25 million into acute hunger.

El-Fasher, the last state capital in the vast region of Darfur to elude the RSF’s grasp, has become the latest strategic front in the war as the paramilitaries attempt to consolidate power in the west.

Activists say the city has become “an open-air morgue” for starved civilians.

Nearly 18 months into the RSF’s siege, El-Fasher – home to 400,000 trapped civilians – has run out of nearly everything.

The animal feed that families have survived on for months has grown scarce and now costs hundreds of dollars a sack.

The majority of the city’s soup kitchens have been forced shut for lack of food, according to the local resistance committees.