Ebola outbreak is ‘fastest growing ever’ as 600 die

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By AFP | Posted by TOE The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo is the “fastest growing” ever, African health authorities said Thursday, as the World Health Organization said it had killed 600 people. Updated numbers issued by the UN health agency showed there have been 1,759 confirmed cases in DR Congo since the outbreak was declared in mid-May, including 600 confirmed deaths. “This is the fastest growing Ebola outbreak ever, not only among the previous Bundibugyo outbreaks, but all the different viruses that are causing Ebola,” Wessam Mankoula, head of emergency preparedness and response for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) told reporters. The deadliest Ebola outbreak — in 2013-16 in West Africa — had 994 cases in the first six weeks, compared to 1,596 in the current one, he said.  “Unfortunately the virus is still ahead of our response. It’s moving faster than deployi...
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UN probe says mass killings, rapes, abductions, starvation by Sudan force amount to genocide

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By Reuters | Posted by TOE

Sudan’s RSF forces carried out mass killings, abductions of women and girls, mass gang rapes and forced starvation in a city they besieged and captured last year, as part of an intentional policy amounting to genocide, a UN probe said on Wednesday.

The Rapid Support Forces, which are battling the Sudanese army in a civil war, committed the crimes in al-Fashir in north Darfur, which they captured last year after a long siege, the UN Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan found.

Survivors described to the mission being raped in rooms where bodies of recently killed civilians, including their own family members, were still lying on the ground.

The report found that the RSF and allies committed the war crime of starvation by imposing a prolonged siege on the city, impeding relief supplies, and shelling food production systems.

The RSF has denied such abuses in over three years of civil war, saying the accounts have been manufactured by its enemies ​and making counter-accusations against them.

The UN human rights chief warned on Friday that a similar “catastrophe” was unfolding around another large city, al-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, and that ​his office had documented patterns of summary executions, abductions, torture and sexual violence in the surrounding region.

Members of the UN human rights council on Monday condemned the violence and set up an urgent inquiry into alleged abuses there.

Britain and other states have warned of a risk of large-scale atrocities as the RSF massed forces around al-Obeid, now home to around half a million people including more than 83,000 internally displaced people.

The fact-finding mission had already concluded in a previous report in February that mass killings of non‑Arab communities when the RSF captured al-Fashir bore hallmarks of genocide.

Its new report said it found additional evidence that the widespread and systematic pattern of conduct of the RSF, including large-scale killings, mass-scale rape and deliberate starvation, was part of an intended policy.

“The patterns we documented in al-Fashir – including encirclement, attacks on civilian infrastructure, restrictions on humanitarian access, and widespread abuses against civilians – serve as a stark warning,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, the mission’s chair.

“The international community must heed these lessons and act to prevent further catastrophe,” he added



from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/MudACjn

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