AP News52%
Young men storm a Congo hospital treating Ebola patients to demand bodies of their kin 18%
By JEAN-YVES KAMALE0% MONIKA PRONCZUK0%
5/24/2026, 10:32:13 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 13 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Ambiguity (Equivocation), and Pessimism Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 33.3% saturation with 187 hits. Analysis detected 825 faulty-reasoning hits from 561 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 33.2% and a BS Rank of 18% (13,854 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 82.40% of the article peer group.
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — Angry young men stormed a hospital treating Ebola patients at the heart of the latest outbreak of the disease in eastern Congo on Sunday evening, forcing the medical staff to scramble to evacuate the patients as gunfire rang out in the area.
It was not immediately known if anyone was hurt in the attack on the Mongbwalu General Hospital but Dr.
Richard Lokudu, the hospital’s medical director, told The Associated Press the attackers demanded that two bodies of their kin be handed over to them.
There was gunfire and the medics were trying to evacuate the patients and the staff, Lokudu said over the phone.
“Mongbwalu General Hospital is on general alert,” he added.
He did not have any further details of the unfolding turmoil.
The attack — the third in a week’s time on healthcare facilities where medical workers struggle with lack of resources to treat suspected Ebola cases — underlined the challenges of the outbreak, which the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern.
Bodies of those who died of Ebola can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when people prepare them for burial and gather for funerals.
On Friday, the government said funeral wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people would be banned in northeastern Congo in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.
On Saturday, a group of residents of Mongbwalu, located in Ituri province, attacked and set fire to a tent set up for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases by the Doctors Without Borders humanitarian group.
During that attack, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections left the facility and were now unaccounted for, Lokudu had said earlier.
On Thursday, another treatment center, in the town of Rwampara, was burned down after family members were banned from retrieving the body of a local man suspected to have died of Ebola.
WHO has said the outbreak poses a “very high” risk for Congo — up from a previous categorization of “high” — but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low.
Earlier on Sunday, the Congolese Ministry of Communication said on X that there were 904 suspected cases of Ebola, mostly in northeastern Ituri Province — a significant jump from the previously announced more than 700 suspected Ebola cases.
The ministry also said the total suspected Ebola deaths stood at 119, but the numbers it released separately for each region added up to 220.
Officials could not immediately be reached to explain the discrepancy.
There is no available vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, a rare type of Ebola, which spread undetected for weeks in Ituri following the first reported death — in late April in the town of Bunia, the provincial capital — while authorities tested for another, more common, Ebola virus and came up negative.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Saturday that three of its volunteers had died from the outbreak in Mongbwalu.
The agency said it believed the three healthcare workers contracted the virus on March 27 while handling dead bodies as part of a humanitarian mission unrelated to Ebola.
If confirmed, this would significantly push back the timeline of the outbreak.
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Pronczuk reported from Dakar, Senegal.
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