Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has said that at least 16 people there died as a result of heavy fighting on Sunday. A further 114 were wounded, the medical charity added.

This brings the total number of deaths MSF has recorded in El Fasher over the past three days to 44.

Clashes intensified between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Friday.

El Fasher is the last major city in the Darfur region still controlled by the Sudanese army after more than a year of brutal civil war.

At the weekend MSF reported that a paediatric hospital it supports was forced to shut down after an air strike killed two children in the intensive care unit and a caregiver.

MSF said it had received a total of 290 wounded patients in another hospital since Friday.

Alongside the charity, UN officials have been warning for weeks that an escalation of violence threatens hundreds of thousands of civilians in El Fasher, many of them displaced from fighting elsewhere. The US is warning of a large-scale massacre.