In this paper, by the moving spheres method, Caffarelli-Silvestre extension formula and blow-up analysis, we study the local behaviour of nonnegative solutions to fractional elliptic equations
\begin{align*} (-\Delta)^{\alpha} u =f(u),~~ x\in \Omega\backslash \Gamma, \end{align*}
where
0<\alpha <1,
\Omega = \mathbb {R}^{N} or
\Omega is a smooth bounded domain,
\Gamma is a singular subset of
\Omega with fractional capacity zero,
f(t) is locally bounded and positive for
t\in [0,\,\infty ), and
f(t)/t^{({N+2\alpha })/({N-2\alpha })} is nonincreasing in
t for large
t, rather than for every
t>0. Our main result is that the solutions satisfy the estimate
\begin{align*} f(u(x))/ u(x)\leq C d(x,\Gamma)^{{-}2\alpha}. \end{align*}
This estimate is new even for
\Gamma =\{0\}. As applications, we derive the spherical Harnack inequality, asymptotic symmetry, cylindrical symmetry of the solutions.