Youths burn Ebola center in Congo over body burial dispute

Local youths set fire to an Ebola treatment center in eastern Congo on Thursday after authorities blocked them from taking a body for a traditional funeral, an attack that lays bare the mounting community distrust threatening to unravel outbreak control efforts, The Korea Times reported.

The attack comes as the United Nations reports 148 suspected deaths and nearly 600 cases in an outbreak the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern — with two confirmed cases, including one death, already crossing into neighboring Uganda.

Youths broke into the Rwampara facility and set fire to objects inside as well as to the body of at least one suspected Ebola victim stored there, after police failed to restore order, according to The Korea Times.

"The police intervened to try to calm the situation, but unfortunately they were unsuccessful. The young people ended up setting fire to the center. That's the situation," said Alexis Burata, a local student who witnessed the events and spoke to The Associated Press by telephone.

Jean Claude Mukendi, deputy senior commissioner and head of public security in Ituri Province, said the confrontation erupted after the victim's family and friends arrived to claim the body. "His family, friends, and other young people wanted to take his body home for a funeral even though the instructions from the authorities during this Ebola virus outbreak are clear," Mukendi said. "All bodies must be buried according to the regulations."

Strict burial protocols are a cornerstone of Ebola containment, as the virus spreads through contact with the bodily fluids of the deceased. But they put public health authorities on a collision course with communities whose funeral traditions require families to wash and handle the dead.

The WHO believes the actual scale of the outbreak exceeds official figures and has raised alarm about the risk of spread across a region destabilized by armed conflict, which has displaced large numbers of people and hampered access for aid workers. Ituri Province shares borders with both Uganda and South Sudan.

The humanitarian organization ALIMA said its field teams fled the center during the attack, but that calm was later restored and operations resumed, according to The Korea Times.

The Rwampara attack is part of a pattern of community resistance that has dogged Ebola responses in the region for years. With armed conflict displacing tens of thousands and official case counts widely believed to understate the true toll, health authorities face a compounding challenge: containing a fast-moving virus while rebuilding the community trust that containment depends on.