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Child soldiers guarded checkpoints as the top United Nations aid official passed through Darfur, in western Sudan. A drone struck an aid vehicle just hours after he passed. On Saturday, he reached a remote town for talks with a paramilitary group accused of atrocities, including rape and ethnic massacres, in Sudan's spiraling civil war. The U.N. official, Tom Fletcher, came to negotiate with leaders of the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., a group that has been a focus of global outrage since late October, when its fighters seized the famine-stricken city of El Fasher amid a wave of violence against civilians. At the meeting, senior R.S.F. officials pledged to allow the United Nations into El Fasher, to deliver aid and to investigate atrocities, for the first time in months, Mr. Fletcher said in a phone interview. "It's likely a matter of days, not months," he said. He cautioned that the timing and other details are not final, warning that "we've got to be careful" to make sure that fighters do not dictate where and how relief is delivered.