Aid groups said Monday they’ve been forced to suspend efforts to contain a new Ebola threat because of a rebel attack on a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo, reflecting an “increasingly worrisome” security situation amid an outbreak that has now killed 100 people.
World Health Organization responders in the town of Beni were placed on “lockdown, unable to move because of security concerns following violence by armed rebel groups over the weekend when many civilians were killed,” WHO’s emergencies director Peter Salama said on Twitter.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said it and other aid groups suspended their field activities, including vaccination, due to the violence.
“It’s a worst-case scenario for any aid group to have to suspend relief work that helps communities in need,” NRC area manager Stephen Lamin said. “But this weekend’s attack on Beni town has left us in an impossible position.”
For weeks, the WHO and other responders have openly worried about insecurity in North Kivu province— a mineral-rich part of DRC riven by decades of conflict between government forces and militant groups that have multiplied and splintered over the past two decades.
Health officials said it could hinder the response there to Ebola, a serious, often-fatal disease that is transmitted to people from wild animals and spreads from human to human through the bodily fluids of people who exhibit symptoms.
“Sadly, that’s exactly what’s happening,” said Aditya Bhattacharji, health care director at Eurasia Group, a consultancy that studies risks abroad. “An added complication here is that some of these fighters may have been exposed to Ebola, and yet they’ll be even more difficult to track down than ordinary civilians.”
The BBC reported the Beni attack began Saturday afternoon, lasted several hours and resulted in the death of 18 people, including 14 civilians.
Multiple reports attributed the attacks to the Allied Democratic Forces, an insurgent group that formed in Uganda but also operates in the DRC.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said the disruption will affect food aid, in addition to the Ebola fight.
“The recent attack has made the situation even worse as families have had to flee from their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs,” Mr. Lamin said. “Donor countries must open their purse strings as rapidly as possible to help stem a humanitarian situation that is quickly getting out of control.”
The Ebola outbreak in the region has resulted in nearly 150 cases and had been linked to 100 deaths as of Saturday, Dr. Salama said in a series of Twitter posts Monday.
Because of the unrest, the population in Ebola-affected towns are highly migratory, sparking fears that deadly virus could spread further or spill into neighboring Uganda.
Dr. Salama said an infected person, who evaded response teams and refused care, introduced the disease into a previously unaffected area near the Ugandan border. WHO sent a response team to the area on Sunday.
The outbreak is the DRC’s 10th since Ebola was discovered in the late 1970s and its second this year.
A previous outbreak in a remote part of northwestern part of the country near the Congo River was stamped out after a massive response, yet the ongoing outbreak was discovered a week later, at the start of August.
The ADF rebels have killed more than 1,500 people in the Beni region since October 2014. The rebels formed in the 1990s, eventually relocating from neighboring Uganda to Congo, the Associated Press reported.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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