Mob Burns Congo Ebola Center Amid Rare Strain Outbreak

Aid is desperately scarce here in Bunia, the epicenter of an alarming Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hospitals are swamped with patients infected with a rare species of the virus.

So medical staff at one hospital on the edge of the city were relieved when an international aid group erected an isolation ward in its garden, to treat the worst cases.

That respite turned to chaos on Thursday when a furious crowd stormed the hospital, hoping to retrieve the body of a suspected Ebola victim, and the isolation ward was burned to the ground.

The melee encapsulated some of the hardest challenges facing medical workers in Ituri, the province in northeastern Congo at the heart of the current outbreak.

Already, the rare Bundibugyo Ebola species has two advantages over aid workers trying to push it back: It has no vaccine or therapies, and the outbreak was detected disastrously late, perhaps two months after the first infection, health experts say.

On top of that, the disease has struck in an often-ignored corner of eastern Congo, where a decades-long conflict has left people with an enduring sense of frustration and trauma. Those emotions, combined with misinformation, can turn residents against the very medics trying to save them.

“They thought we wanted to kill patients, not save them,” said Dr. Isaac Mugenyi, the hospital director, at his office on Friday. Yards away lay the charred remains of the isolation ward: tent poles and burned beds. Four soldiers lingered by the hospital gate.

Dr. Mugenyi looked stricken. “This situation is very, very tough,” he said.

The World Health Organization estimates the current outbreak has already killed 177 people and infected 750 more — a toll likely to rise sharply. At the airport in Bunia, plastic containers and boxes of medical aid stood piled on the runway, as aid groups scrambled to set up isolation wards and other facilities to fight the virus.

Further complicating matters, the U.N. halted all flights to Congo from Uganda on Friday, citing an order from the Ugandan government, according to an internal memo seen by The New York Times.

Medics and residents said the fire at the hospital was set off by the death of a man named Elie Munungo. Mr. Munungo, 28, was a popular person in the community, according to several residents. He played football for the local team, drove a motorcycle taxi and sang in a church choir.

After he died on Thursday, five days after being admitted for what his family initially thought was malaria, several hundred people massed at the hospital gates to demand his body for burial.

When staff refused, the crowd threw stones at the hospital, damaging a vehicle belonging to the international aid group. Then they surged through the gates. Police fired into the air, attempting to disperse the crowd. Then the Ebola ward, a pair of tents in the hospital garden, caught fire, with five suspected Ebola patients inside.

The Ebola patients ran for their lives, and have yet to return, several hospital staff members said. Patients from other areas in the hospital also fled.

Stories had circulated among the crowd that the medics had been poisoning the Ebola patients, Mr. Mugenyi said. In fact, he said, the problem is that many people turned to traditional healers before coming to the hospital. “So by the time they arrive here, they are seriously ill.”

The chaotic scenes were an outlier, however, in a city that on Friday presented a face of deceptive normality.

Markets were busy and the streets flowed with traffic. Laughing children skipped home from school. Women balanced impossible loads of vegetables on their heads. Perhaps one-quarter of people wore face masks.

But beneath the apparent calm flowed a deep undercurrent of apprehension. Supplies of hand sanitizer have run out across the city, and face masks were selling for up to 10 times more than usual, pharmacists said.

At a large funeral on Friday, attendants checked mourners for symptoms of Ebola as they entered. Instead of the traditional meal, they were given cold sodas.

At a nearby pharmacy, Elizabeth Kombi, 32, said she was keeping her six children at home to ensure their safety. Hours earlier, she had sold her last bottle of hand sanitizer.

“People are afraid because this time around, it’s killing a lot of people,” she said. “And there’s no cure yet.”

She hoped the W.H.O. would deliver a cure in the coming weeks, she said. But the organization, from which the United States withdrew as a member in January, says it could be six months before one is available.

At the stricken hospital, staff members said that Mr. Munungo was safely buried by his family. But the remains of a second man, who had died hours earlier, were burned in the fire, staff said.

Hours earlier, yet another Ebola patient had died.

Elekane Bugasaki, a hygiene worker at the hospital, disinfected his overalls as his shift ended. He knew the work was dangerous, he said. But he was doing it to keep his seven children safe.

“I’m afraid,” he said, pulling on a backpack to go home. “I pray a lot to God.”

I wished him well and told him to keep safe.

“But there is no treatment,” he shot back. “How can we be safe?”