Kinshasa – praag.org

New ebola cases unrelated to West African strain

The World Health Organization has just confirmed that the newly-identified cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in the Democratic Republic of Congo is genetically unrelated to the strain currently circulating in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria.

A WHO collaborating research center in Franceville, Gabon, the Centre International de Recherches Médicales, had previously identified six Ebola positive samples sent to the laboratory. They report today that, “the virus in the Boende district is definitely not derived from the virus strain currently circulating in west Africa.”

The WHO amplified that finding:

“Results from the virus characterization, together with findings from the epidemiological investigation, are definitive: the outbreak in DRC is a distinct and independent event, with no relationship to the outbreak in west Africa.”

The finding is worthy of such emphasis because of concerns that the west African outbreak had somehow spread to the DRC, formerly Zaire. The viruses in each outbreak are genetically distinct, but they are both of the Zaire species of Ebola virus, a fact that might be confused as meaning the outbreaks are related.

The form of the Zaire virus currently circulating in the DRC is most closely related to one responsible for an outbreak in 1995 in the city of Kikwit. Ebola virus first emerged in the DRC and South Sudan in 1976. The current outbreak in the DRC is the seventh on record.

The index case has been clearly identified as a pregnant woman from Ikanamongo Village who died on August 11 after preparing bushmeat that her husband had hunted.

The means of viral spread, as reported by the WHO, is typical of most Ebola outbreaks: “Local customs and rituals associated with death meant that several health-care workers were exposed and presented with similar symptoms in the following week.”

Thus far, the WHO has identified 53 cases consistent with a diagnosis of Ebola, including 31 deaths. Seven of the dead were healthcare workers.

But the WHO stressed that the outbreak is primarily occurring in a remote region of the DRC, about 750 miles from the capital of Kinshasa.

Source: Forbes

DRC police arrest youth gangs in Kinshasa

Police in the Democratic Republic of Congo were Tuesday on the offensive against youth gangs in the capital, long accused of robbing, beating up and even murdering residents, police said.

“Operation Likofi (“punch” in Lingala) began in Kinshasa on November 15 and will end on February 15,” police colonel and spokesman Pierre Mwana Mputu told AFP. “We have mapped out the hotbeds of criminal activity.”

The youths known as “kuluna” roam the streets in packs, often under the influence of drugs or alcohol. They violently snatch bags, jewellery and mobile phones. Victims who resist face being clubbed or hacked with machetes. Several have been killed.

“The threat has grown in scale. It’s as if there was no state… it pleased the supreme authority (President Joseph Kabila) to instruct the police to eradicate this phenomenon… and clean up the town,” Mwana Mputu said.

Most people in Kinshasa, a city of some 10 million, live in dire poverty. But the authorities have urged them to help by denouncing gang members, who include the children of police officers and soldiers, several residents told AFP.

On the streets, police officers — some of them masked — have been arresting many young bandits, who will be sent before magistrates especially assigned to the task. State television has shown footages of dozens of youths, including women, handcuffed with bands of cloth.

“Let us hope that this lasts, because in Kinshasa the authorities often don’t go through with their missions to the end,” a women resident said.

“This is a really good idea. The kuluna sometimes kill pregnant women for no reason. They even wreck the stalls of people selling bread and fritters,” she added.

The more notorious gang leaders have sought to evade the police crackdown by disguising themselves, locals said.

Some residents claimed that police officers have carried out several summary executions of youths, sometimes in front of the homes of the alleged gang members. Human rights organisations told AFP that they had received reports of such killings, without being able to confirm them.

Mwana Mputu denied the allegations and said that if any breaches of regulations came to the notice of authorities, these would be punished. – AFP

Many civilians massacred in Congo, say U.N. officials

Rival armed groups may have killed hundreds of civilians in massacres and other “incomprehensibly vicious” attacks in eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), senior U.N. officials said on Wednesday.

The violence is focused in North Kivu province near the border with Rwanda where warring groups have targeted villages seen as supporting their opponents, while the national army has been diverted to fight a movement of mutineers known as M23.

“The deterioration of the overall security situation in North Kivu following the M23 mutiny and related ruthless attacks against civilians is extremely alarming,” said Roger Meece, special representative of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Meece was cited in a United Nations report issued in Geneva as saying a new round of systematic killings of villagers appeared to have occurred in early August.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said allegations of hundreds of killings were still being verified, but preliminary investigations suggested that a large number of people, mainly women and children, had been slaughtered.

“The sheer viciousness of these murders is beyond comprehension,” she said.

The Congo government in Kinshasa this month rejected calls by other countries in the region for an exclusively African force to tackle the insurgency in the east.

Congo says some of the insurgent groups have support from countries such as Rwanda and Uganda – a charge both those governments deny – and wants an expansion of the 17,000-member U.N. peacekeeping force in the vast, mineral-rich state.

Pillay’s office in Geneva said its mission in Congo had recorded 45 attacks on 30 North Kivu villages since May by a group dubbing itself “Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda” or FDLR, and another called Raia Mutumboki.

The FDLR is largely composed of ethnic Hutus, many of whom fled into the Congo after the defeat of a Hutu government widely viewed as responsible for the massacre of up to a million Tutsis and opponents of its policies in Rwanda in 1994.

The movement sometimes stages attacks in alliance with another armed group, Nyatura, the United Nations says.

Raia Mutumboki is a local militia group that says it is protecting the local population. It targets FDLR members and their families, and has been linked to other attacks against people in Congo perceived to be from Rwanda.

Marie Claire Bangwene Mwavita, administrator of North Kivu’s Masisi territory where much of the fighting has taken place, said that she did not know how many civilians had died so far in the violence, but that there was a risk of growing ethnic conflict.

“I can confirm there are several armed groups operating in Masisi, but I cannot confirm that hundreds have been killed,” she said. “As the armed groups are ethnically motivated, there’s a risk (of growing conflict). But the provincial government is already organizing meetings between different communities to put an end to the problem.”

The U.N. force, known as MONUSCO, focuses on protecting civilians but has been forced to divert resources to tackle the fallout from fighting between the Congolese army and M23.

That conflict has displaced nearly half a million people since the mutiny in April led to the formation of the rebel group that accuses Kinshasa of violating a 2009 peace accord. – Reuters