The rangers guarding the sweeping savannah and ice-capped mountains of Virunga, Africa’s oldest national park, have over the years fought off Ebola epidemics and incursions by militias.
Now, they are facing both at the same time.
Just as the virus has spread across eastern DR Congo in the two provinces that Virunga spans, northern parts of the park have been occupied by Isis-affiliated jihadis from the Allied Democratic Forces. The park is also home to around a third of the world’s endangered mountain gorillas.
On Tuesday night, park rangers and Congolese soldiers fought a seven-hour pitched battle against ADF militants who attacked a funeral wake attended by several hundred people, according to the park’s director. Sixteen people died, including two security agents assigned to Virunga.
The attacks have compounded a looming health crisis, as a region fractured by years of persistent conflict is now prey to what the WHO fears could become the worst Ebola epidemic since the 2014 outbreak in West Africa, which claimed 11,000 lives.
