Angry young men stormed an Ebola treatment hospital in eastern Congo on Sunday evening, sparking panic as medical staff scrambled to evacuate patients amid gunfire in the area.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone was injured in the attack on Mongbwalu General Hospital. The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Richard Lokudu, told The Associated Press (AP) that the assailants demanded the release of two bodies of relatives.
“There was gunfire and the medics were trying to evacuate the patients and the staff,” Lokudu said by phone, adding that the facility had been placed on high alert but providing no further details as events unfolded.
The incident marks the third attack in a week on health care facilities struggling with limited resources amid an Ebola outbreak.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the situation a public health emergency of international concern, underscoring the strain on an already fragile response system.
Bodies of those who die of Ebola can be highly contagious and can spread the virus when they are prepared for burial or when mourners gather for funerals.
In response to the outbreak, Congolese authorities have mandated that the dangerous work of burying suspected victims be handled by trained teams wherever possible, a measure that has often sparked protests from families.
On Friday, the government said funeral wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people would be banned in northeastern Congo in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.
On Saturday, residents in Mongbwalu, located in Ituri province, attacked and set fire to a tent set up for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases by the Doctors Without Borders humanitarian group.
During that attack, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections left the facility and were unaccounted for, Lokudu said earlier.
On Thursday, another treatment center in the town of Rwampara was burned down after family members were barred from retrieving the body of a man suspected to have died of Ebola.
The WHO has said the outbreak poses a “very high” risk for Congo, up from a previous categorization of “high,” but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low.
Earlier on Sunday, the Congolese Ministry of Communication said on X that there were 904 suspected cases of Ebola, mostly in northeastern Ituri province, a significant increase from the previously announced figure of more than 700 suspected cases.
The ministry also said total suspected Ebola deaths stood at 119, though figures released separately by region added up to 220. Officials could not immediately be reached to explain the discrepancy.
There is no available vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, a rare type of Ebola that spread undetected for weeks in Ituri after the first reported death in late April in Bunia, the provincial capital, while authorities initially tested for a more common Ebola strain that returned negative results.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said Saturday that three of its volunteers had died from the outbreak in Mongbwalu.
The agency said it believes the three health care workers contracted the virus on March 27 while handling bodies as part of a humanitarian mission unrelated to Ebola.
If confirmed, that would significantly push back the timeline of the outbreak.
