Via Reuters: At least 14 killed in violence in eastern Congo's Ebola zone. Excerpt and then a comment:
Unidentified gunmen killed at least 14 people, including two health workers, on Saturday in an area of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where militia violence has hampered efforts to contain an Ebola outbreak, authorities said.
The latest outbreak of the deadly disease in Congo has killed 152 people, mostly in the North Kivu and Ituri provinces that have been the epicenter of armed rebellion and ethnic killing since two civil wars in the late 1990s.
The number of cases has accelerated in the past two weeks and an emergency committee of World Health Organization experts on Wednesday said that the outbreak was likely to worsen significantly unless the response was stepped up.
Eleven civilians and one soldier were killed in the city of Beni, where scores of people have contracted the virus, Alloys Mbwarara, mayor of Beni’s Rwenzori neighborhood, told Reuters on Sunday.
In the city of Butembo, 50 km south of Beni, militiamen killed two members of the medical unit of Congo’s army, Health Minister Oly Ilunga said on Saturday.
“It’s a sad day for all response teams who sometimes put their life in danger while serving the country. Health workers should not be a target for armed groups,” he said.
It is unclear who carried out the attacks. The Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan Islamist group active in eastern Congo, has clashed with Congolese troops in Beni in recent weeks. Mai Mai militiamen, comprising a number of armed bands that originally formed to resist Rwandan invasions in the 1990s, are also present in the region.
Fuelling tension in the cities are local mistrust and attacks by rebel groups that have disrupted treatment, burials and vaccination programs in recent weeks.
As a result of Saturday’s killings, protests erupted across Beni on Sunday morning, said Safari Mambueni, the city’s police commander. The extent of the violence was unclear.
The extent of local alienation, by contrast, is very clear. North Kivu and other provinces have been putting up with incessant violence for decades, while getting no effective support from Kinshasa. Now Ebola has arrived, and it's just another damn thing to deal with, imposed by a central government incapable of suppressing the armed gangs in the backwoods that pose a mortal threat. By comparison, Ebola must seem like a nuisance.
