The Sudanese city of El Fasher resembles a “massive crime scene”, with large piles of bodies heaped throughout its streets as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) work to destroy evidence of the scale of their massacre.

Six weeks after the RSF seized the city, corpses have been gathered together in scores of piles to await burial in mass graves or cremated in huge pits, analysis indicates.

While the final death toll of the massacre remains unclear, British MPs have been briefed that at least 60,000 have been murdered in El Fasher. Sarah Champion, chair of the Commons international development select committee, said: “Members received a private briefing on Sudan, at which one of the academics stated: ‘Our low estimate is 60,000 people have been killed there in the last three weeks.’”

As many as 150,000 residents of El Fasher remain unaccounted for since the city fell to the RSF. They are not thought to have left the city, and this grisly development comes amid increasingly gloomy speculation about their fate.