Protesters Attack Msf Office İn Ebola-Hit Guinea

A group of angry Guinean protesters have attacked the office of Paris-based humanitarian aid agency Doctors without Borders (MSF) in the southeastern city of Nzerekore over the dismantling of a local market by the authorities as part of measures to contain a deadly Ebola outbreak in the country, a local health official said.



Armed with sticks and clubs, the mob angered by the dismantling of the market headed Thursday to the MSF office, chanting: "'Ebola is a lie," the official told Anadolu Agency on the condition of anonymity.



The protesters also accused the organization of be primarily responsible for the spread of Ebola virus in the forest region in the southeast of the country, he added.



Security forces fired teargas to disperse the protesters, the source said.



The Thursday attack was not the first against an MSF office in Guinea. In April, protesters from Macenta, a town located 800 kilometers from the capital, attacked an isolation center run by the humanitarian organization in similar circumstances.



The forest region in the southeastern Guinea has been the epicenter of the virus, where it erupted for the first time in January. Since then, the virus has spread to all over West Africa.



The World Health Organization has announced that the Ebola virus has killed some 1,552 people in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, since the outbreak began in January.



A contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure, it first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).



It can be transmitted to humans from wild animals and reportedly spreads through contact with the body fluids of infected persons or of those who have died of the disease.



By Mamadou Bah Boussouriou



englishnews@aa.com.tr



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