World News Protesters furious over rebel attack torch UN base and city center in Congolese city

LONDON–
An angry crowd set fire to a United Nations building in addition to a local mayor’s office in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Monday, in the wake of a deadly attack by an armed group.

Violent demonstrations erupted in the northeastern city of Beni after a minimum of 8 people were killed and others were kidnapped on Sunday night during a raid by the Allied Democratic Forces, a militant group of Ugandan origin. Locals were apparently furious that federal government soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers had failed to secure them or prevent the attack, according to separate statements from the Congolese National Authorities and the United Nations.

Initially, the protesters stormed the town hall of Beni and torched the mayor’s office. Then the crowd marched to the nearby head office of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known by the French acronym MONUSCO, and set the substance ablaze.

The U.N. base was left “terribly harmed” and staff “have been redeployed to other areas for their safety” as the protests continue, the United Nations said in a press release Monday.

The Congolese National Police stated its forces “are working to bring back public order.”

Some 16,000 peacekeepers, called “blue helmets,” serve with MONUSCO. The mission’s headquarters in Beni is a crucial base for the joint efforts of the United Nations and the Congolese government to deal with a yearlong Ebola break out in the region that has actually declared the lives of over 2,000 people, making it the second-deadliest Ebola epidemic on record anywhere. Beni was an early epicenter and has been hard struck by the continuous outbreak.

The World Health Company, the global health arm of the United Nations, announced on Tuesday that its Ebola responders are “on lockdown” amidst shooting, riots and civil strife, avoiding them from accessing areas impacted by the lethal virus.

” Groups are arranging contact follow-up by phone and remotely directing neighborhood health workers in places we can’t reach,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu composed on Twitter. “This is a disaster since it will just contribute to the suffering of currently overburdened neighborhoods.”

Francois Grignon, an acting deputy unique agent at MONUSCO, stated U.N. peacekeepers were not asked by the Army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to participate in the battle against the attackers after Sunday’s attack.

” We can not enforce ourselves in a functional situation for offensive operations,” Grignon said in a statement published on Twitter by MONUSCO on Monday. “We came in assistance to leave the injured, we can be found in assistance to share information when possible.”

In the hours after the violent demonstrations, MONUSCO chief Leila Zerrougui attended a National Security Council meeting chaired by Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi.

” She worried that she comprehended individuals’s anger and disappointment of the population after additional lethal attacks by the ADF,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a declaration Monday, utilizing the acronym for the Allied Democratic Forces. “The mission will work closely with the authorities to jointly discover options for the people of Beni.”.

MONUSCO has actually contacted local leaders in Beni to support a go back to relax, “which is essential both to fight the ADF and to continue the response to Ebola,” Dujarric stated.