Congolese soldiers fire in air to disperse election protesters

Reuters
Security forces in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo fired live rounds and tear gas on Thursday to scatter demonstrators who burned tires and attacked Ebola centers in protest at their exclusion from the presidential election.
The electoral commission (CENI) announced on Wednesday that it was cancelling voting in Sunday’s election in the cities of Beni, Butembo and their surrounding areas due to an ongoing Ebola outbreak and militia violence.
Those places are strongholds of opposition to outgoing President Joseph Kabila, and local politicians denounced the move as an effort to swing the vote in favor of his preferred candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary.
“There was a group of demonstrators who wanted to enter the CENI office…to demand the withdrawal of the decision,” said Giscard Yere, a Beni resident.
“But the police officers and soldiers who were there fired to disperse the demonstrators.”
Protesters ransacked an Ebola isolation center in Beni and it is possible that patients fled, according to Aruna Abedi, the deputy director of the Ebola response.
They also attacked the office of the government agency coordinating the response to the Ebola virus in Beni before U.N. peacekeepers pushed them back, Abedi said.
“Protesters tried to force the door of the center,” Abedi told Reuters. “They were chanting songs hostile to the government and demanding elections. They threw projectiles.”
Colonel Safari Kazingufu, the police commander in Beni, said his forces had deployed across the city to restore order, including around Ebola treatment centers.