Rebel attacks in eastern Congo kill several Ebola responders

BENI, CONGO — Rebels killed four Ebola response workers in an overnight ambush in eastern Congo, the World Health Organization said Thursday, warning that the attack will give the waning outbreak new momentum in what has been called a war zone.

“We are heartbroken that our worst fears have been realized,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

It was by far the deadliest such attack in the second-worst Ebola outbreak in history, the United Nations health agency said.

The dead included a member of a vaccination team, two drivers and a police officer. Many of the six others wounded were with Congo’s health ministry.

Mai-Mai fighters attacked a camp housing scores of aid workers overnight in Biakato, local official Salambongo Selemani said. Warnings had been posted demanding that the health workers leave or face “the worst,” Selemani said.

The other attack targeted an Ebola response co-ordination office in Mangina, WHO said.

Allied Democratic Forces rebels are to blame, Beni territory administrator Donat Kasereka Kibwana said.

The latest attacks come after days of deadly unrest in the city of Beni, where residents outraged by repeated rebel attacks stormed the local UN peacekeeping base, demanding more protection. WHO evacuated 49 of its staffers there, leaving 71 in place.

Ebola response work was put on lockdown in Beni, dismaying health experts who say every attack hurts crucial efforts to contain the deadly virus.

Most of the recent new cases have been reported in the newly targeted communities of Biakato, Mangina and Beni.

“The last strongholds of the virus were in these areas,” WHO’s Ryan said. He called working conditions in the remote areas difficult at the best of times.

The number of cases had been dropping in the year-long outbreak which has killed more than 2,100 people and was declared a rare global health emergency earlier this year.

Several days this month, zero cases were reported. Just seven cases were reported in the past week, WHO said.

Cases have surged after previous attacks on health workers and facilities. “Ebola was retreating. These attacks will give it force again,” the WHO chief said.

Despite two promising new Ebola vaccines, health workers continue to battle misinformation and reluctance to seek treatment for the virus that is largely spread via close contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, including the dead.

In addition, many local health workers have been recruited by the “well-paying” Ebola response.

That has led to shortages of trained people to deal with other serious health issues such as an even deadlier measles outbreak and malaria, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said in a statement.