Angry locals stoned health workers disinfecting  the home of the first identified new case.

The three new cases of EBOLA – after a seven-week period of no infections – are a 26-year-old electrician, and girls aged 11 and 7.

They are all connected to the Horizon Healthcare Centre in Beni.

Authorities say all the medical workers dealing with the outbreak that killed more than 2 200 people have been vaccinated.

Battling COVID 19 and the worst measles outbreak on the planet, these workers are at full stretch trying to prevent EBOLA taking hold again.

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43 people, including a pregnant woman, were killed by Islamist rebels in Beni at the weekend where eight new EBOLA infections were recorded.

A month ago the World Health Organization was forced to pull medical personnel out of the Beni region where they having success fighting the 14-month-old EBOLA outbreak.

Since tracing the disease and vaccinating against it has become nearly impossible, there has been an uptick in EBOLA infections.

The violence is the work the of Uganda-based Allied Democratic Forces who have killed nearly 200 people in Eastern DRC since the beginning of last month. 

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Violent attacks on medical workers by rebels and suspicious locals are hampering efforts to curb the hemorrhagic disease that’s killed 1 300 people in the past 10 months.

Health workers fear that their inability to vaccinate people against EBOLA will inevitably lead to a further increase in the planet’s second worst outbreak of the disease.

They believe that the approach to fighting EBOLA in the DRC requires a total reset.

Attacks by the Uganda-based rebel group calling itself the Allied Democratic Forces killed 16 people in Beni this month.

Locals, who doubt the motives of the medical teams, have attacked and killed some of them and destroyed treatment centers.

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They say they killed three Congolese soldiers in Bovta, which is near the Ugandan border.

ends intro

Congolese military authorities, who confirm the deaths of two soldiers, are blaming the Islamist militia called Allied Democratic Forces for the attack.

President Felix Tshisekedi, visiting Washington earlier this month said ADF had been infiltrated by IS.

He’s committed the Congo to joining the international coalition against the group.

ADF is one of more than 100 armed groups active in the Eastern DRC.

At least a dozen are fighting near Beni which is the epicenter of the second most serious EBOLA outbreak in history.

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The victims, in the eastern state of South Kivu, include a policeman and an election official.

Campaigners for opposition candidate Felix Tshisekedi say the four deaths occurred during clashes at a polling station in the Walungu area.

Campaign director Vital Kamerhe says violence broke out after the electoral official was accused of trying to rig the vote in favour of Emmanuel Ramazini Shadary, the candidate championed by President Joseph Kabila in power for 17 years.

The angry crowd started fighting with police, leaving a policeman, and electoral official and two voters dead

The deaths occurred at an opposition stronghold near the cities of Beni and Butembo where voting was postponed until March. 

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Bart Ouvry is being booted out because the EU extended sanctions against ruling party candidate Emmanuel Shadary.

EU sanctions were slapped on Emmanuel Shadary for his role, as a member of Joseph Kabila’s government, in the brutal crackdown on anti-government protests in 2017.

Despite objections from the DRC government, the EU’s extended these punitive measures.

Violence and chaos reigns in the DRC ahead of tomorrow’s presidential elections.

Rioters in the eastern city of Beni, ransacked an EBOLA assessment centre, protesting against the authorities decision to delay voting there and in Butembo and Yumbi until March because of violence and the spreading EBOLA outbreak.

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Angry voters have embarked on a general strike and taken to the streets of the eastern capital Goma saying the postponement of the poll in there cities is an attempt to rig the election.

President Joseph Kabila says the electoral commission is playing by the book postponing Sunday’s voting in Beni and Butembu in eastern DRC and Yumbi in the west.

He says it’s all about saving lives in the face of ethnic and rebel violence and the spread of the EBOLA virus.

Opposition voters say there was campaigning in these areas – which are all opposition strongholds –  so there’s no reason there shouldn’t be voting.

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They’re saying it would be impossible to hold a credible process  in these areas because of insecurity and the EBOLA outbreak.

The opposition’s calling it another strategy to hijack the truth of the poll.

The areas where the vote has been further delayed are Beni and Butembo at the epicenter of the EBOLA outbreak in the east of the DRC and Yumbi in the west , where 100 people died in ethnic clashes last week.

The move by the electoral commission means the votes of  more than a million of the country’s 46 electors will not be considered in the results to be announced next month.

Beni and Butembo are considered opposition bastions.

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Last Thursday an Antonov cargo transporter crashed in the Capital Kinshasa killing all six people aboard.

The cheaper but less safe Antonov aircraft are popular means of moving cargo and troops around he Democratic Republic of Congo that does not have a road system to boast of.

Last Thursday’s fatal crash involved a plane coming home from flying voting material to the central city of Tshikapa.

Beni, the scene of yesterday’s crash, is ground zero for the current outbreak of EBOLA which has become the worst in Congolese medical history.

Its also an important logistical centre for government troops fighting rebels that melt into neighboring Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda.

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200 people have died of the deadly haemorrhagic  disease and 300 cases have been reported.

At least 25 000 people have been inoculated against the Ebola outbreak in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

But vaccination efforts and attempts to isolate and contain the disease, which was first recorded in the Congo in 1976,  are hampered by violence against the medical volunteers.

At least two of them have been killed by locals.

About half the victims of what is the tenth Ebola outbreak in the DRC, come from Beni, a city of 800 000 people near the border with Rwanda and Uganda. 

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