Attack kills 10 police officers and 18 fighters in Pakistan
By the AFREEQUE newsroom, based on Al Jazeera
An attack on police officers operating against illegal gold mining left 10 members of the security forces and 18 fighters dead in north-western Pakistan. Twelve police officers were also wounded, while the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, according to provincial authorities cited by Al Jazeera.
The attack on police officers operating against illegal gold mining led to more than 1,000 people who had been in contact with Ebola patients being lost to follow-up, while three people who tested positive remain missing, according to World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Three health facilities were also looted and set on fire in Cantine-Aloya, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the violence was restricting humanitarian access and disrupting epidemiological surveillance, contact tracing and patient care. Two weeks earlier, a nurse had been killed and another health worker seriously injured in Tshopo province during an intervention linked to an Ebola alert.
The situation report from the National Institute of Public Health (INSP), dated 9 November, records 11,042 confirmed Ebola cases, 5,387 deaths and 2,990 recoveries since the start of the 17th outbreak. The outbreak affects 67 health zones across eight provinces.
The attack comes after the announcement on 7 November that the Ebola outbreak had become the largest in the history of the DRC, followed on 8 November by the publication of figures showing 10,668 cases and 5,198 deaths as of 3 November in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
