Nurse killed and colleague badly hurt while answering an Ebola alert in Congo's Tshopo province

A nurse was killed and his colleague left severely injured on Saturday while answering an alert about a possible Ebola case in northeastern Congo, where the country is fighting the deadliest Ebola outbreak in its history.

The injured health worker is still in hospital.

The World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations health agency, said the attack happened on 24 October 2026 in Bafwasende, a town in Tshopo province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The WHO statement did not name either health worker and did not say why they were attacked.

Where is Bafwasende and why does it matter?

Bafwasende lies in the northeast of Congo, on the border with Ituri province, which provincial officials described in August as the centre of the outbreak.

The first seven Ebola cases in Tshopo were all brought in from Ituri, through a checkpoint at Avakubi inside the Bafwasende area, and the province's first locally caught case was recorded in the same area in early August.

That means Bafwasende's health workers have been responding to the disease since at least early August.

A series of attacks, not a single one

This is not the first attack on Ebola workers in Bafwasende itself.

In August, three health workers were reported beaten and threatened with death in the village of Bumele, in the Bafwasende health zone.

A provincial lawmaker, Héritier Likaka, said young men accused them of bringing Ebola to the village.

The same thing has happened across the outbreak zone.

In May, at the start of the outbreak, angry residents set fire to tents at two health centres in two attacks within a week.

In early June, at least four Red Cross volunteers were injured when a crowd attacked a team carrying out a safe burial in Bunia, the capital of Ituri.

On 1 July, people set fire to an Ebola treatment centre in Bafwabango, in Ituri.

By 18 July, authorities had recorded at least a dozen attacks on health facilities and workers, many of them by angry crowds storming treatment centres or targeting response teams in the field.

Around the same time, BBC Verify, the BBC's fact-checking unit, counted 12 cases of communities resisting Ebola control measures and confirmed seven of them from video.

It also found false claims in circulation, including that health workers were deliberately spreading the disease.

Responders say some residents have held team members captive or threatened them.

What WHO leaders said

WHO's Regional Director for Africa, Dr Mohamed Yakub Janabi, condemned the attack and wrote on X, "Misinformation and fear must never fuel violence."

WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said everyone protecting communities from the disease must be able to work in dignity and safety, adding, "Healthcare must always be protected."

Signs that attitudes in Bafwasende had been changing

The story is not only one of hostility. In mid-September, Dr Marcel Likilo, the head doctor of the Bafwasende health zone, said people there had been very hostile at the start, but that attitudes were beginning to change as cases appeared in the community and awareness work continued.

He pointed to Baego, an area once known as one of the hardest for response teams, where residents set up a handwashing station themselves after the first case was found, without being asked.

That improvement was reported about six weeks before Saturday's attack.

How big is the outbreak?

Congo's health ministry has recorded more than 9,800 cases and more than 4,700 deaths since the outbreak began in May.

It is the deadliest Ebola outbreak in the country's history and, according to WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the second largest ever recorded.

What is still not known

Local authorities had not commented on the attack or on any suspects when it was reported, so the motive, any arrests and the names of the two health workers remain unconfirmed.

No further details about the injured worker's condition have been released.