African tribesmen have carried out a third—and this time deadly—attack on an Ebola treatment center in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), killing a policeman and wounding a health worker in the third and most deadly attack on those centers in as many weeks.
The Ebola treatment center, located in Butembo in the province of North Kivu, only reopened last Saturday after another attack by tribesmen the previous Wednesday forced its closure—and the withdrawal of the Doctors without Borders staff.
“Shooting started at about six in the morning (0400 GMT) and resumed 30 minutes later with resistance from the army and the police,” Butembo mayor Timothée Muissa Kiesse told the AFP. The health worker was shot and being treated in hospital.
“The army and the police caught one of the attackers,” he said, adding that this contained the hope that now they might “understand the motive for the raid.”
The captured attacker was a member of the “Mai-Mai” rebel group, a loose collection of tribesmen who have taken part in numerous, unreleated and ongoing battles with almost everyone else in the in the DRC for the past 20 years.
In 2010, a “Mai-Mai” leader named “Colonel Mayele” was arrested by UN forces for leading a Mai-Mai mass rape campaign in the Walikale region of North Kivu province.
Another Mai-Mai leader, named Gédéon Kyungu Mutanga, surrendered to UN troops in 2006 and was found guilty of “war crimes” committed between October 2003 and May 2006. He was sentenced to death, but escaped from prison in 2011 and formed the “Mai-Mai Kata Katanga” (“Secede Katanga”).
Other “Mai-Mai” groups have claimed to be behind an attack on the Katanga airport in February 2011, while in May 2007, Mai-Mai fighters killed two wildlife officers in Virunga National Park, home to the endangered mountain gorilla population. The Mai-Mai are also known wo regularly slaughter mountain gorillas for no apparent reason, bringing their total numbers down to less than 1,000.
The attacks on treatment centers greatly hinder the ability to contain the Ebola virus, particularly as the locals have started fleeing the area—carrying the disease with them.
The Congo health ministry warned that a “significant upsurge” in new cases could follow the attacks.
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