Ebola outbreak risks becoming deadliest on record, IRC warns
Health workers wearing protective equipment walk outside the General Referral Hospital during the Ebola outbreak response on May 21, 2026 in Mongbwalu, Democratic Republic of Congo. (Michel Lunanga/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — The New York-based International Rescue Committee (IRC) aid organization warned on Tuesday that the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and neighboring Uganda is now spreading faster than responders can contain it and risks becoming “the deadliest on record” without urgent international action.
What is especially alarming, the IRC said, is that the outbreak is no longer limited to remote areas of the DRC’s northeastern province of Ituri, the epicenter of the current epidemic.
Cases and contacts are now spreading into larger regional hubs, the IRC warned, including the major city of Goma in the DRC’s eastern province of North Kivu and also Uganda’s capital, Kampala, with fears of much wider transmission.
“The outbreak is spreading faster than the response, with over 900 suspected cases and at least 223 deaths already reported across DRC and Uganda, including in major transport hubs like Goma and Kampala,” the IRC wrote.
The IRC said conflict, mass displacement and deep international aid cuts have left health systems far weaker than during the massive 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak in the eastern DRC, which the World Health Organization said killed at least 2,299 people.
The last time the IRC issued a warning of this scale about Ebola was during the 2018-2020 outbreak, when the organization repeatedly warned that violence, mistrust and weak health systems could allow the virus to spiral into a regional catastrophe.
The IRC is calling for an emergency international funding surge, the appointment of a United Nations emergency coordinator, faster import approvals for medical supplies and equipment, stronger community outreach to rebuild trust, special protection for women and girls – who reportedly make up around two-thirds of suspected cases – and long-term investment in fragile health systems already damaged by war and insecurity.
The current Ebola outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of Ebola for which there are no approved vaccines or therapeutics and which requires different diagnostics than other variants. Case fatality rates for previous Bundibugyo outbreaks have ranged from 30% to 50%, according to the WHO.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the deadliest Ebola outbreak on record occurred between 2014 and 2016 in West Africa, with more than 28,600 cases reported. The WHO said that outbreak killed at least 11,325 people by June 2016.
WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a Monday briefing that the current Ebola outbreak “will get worse before it gets better.”
“We are facing an extremely serious and difficult outbreak. It will get worse before it gets better,” Tedros said on Monday. “But we know this virus, and we know how to stop it. We have stopped every previous Ebola outbreak, and we will stop this one, too.”
Ghebreyesus said he wanted to echo comments made by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa about overcoming the outbreak with unity.
“The question is just how quickly we can do it, and how many more lives will be lost before we do,” Ghebreyesus added.
Last week, Tedros classified the Ebola outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern – one level below a pandemic in the United Nations agency’s alert system.
The WHO continues to consider the national risk assessment as “very high” while the regional level risk remains “high” and the global risk level remains “low,” Ghebreyesus said on Monday.
The outbreak has led to multiple countries, including the U.S., India, the U.K. and Australia, putting travel restrictions in place.
Entry to the U.S. is restricted for foreign travelers who have recently been in the DRC, Uganda and South Sudan.
Meanwhile, U.S. passport holders and U.S. nationals returning to the U.S. from the three countries will be funneled to Dulles Airport in Virginia to be screened for symptoms and interviewed about possible exposure.
Enhanced screening efforts also began at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as of Saturday morning. Efforts at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston will begin late Tuesday.
Lawful permanent residents – green card holders – who have been in any of the three countries in question over the last 21 days are temporarily barred from entering the U.S.
ABC News’ Eric M. Strauss and Mary Kekatos contributed to this report.
An Israeli artillery unit fires toward Lebanon on April 9, 2026 in northern Israel. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors are expected to convene again at the State Department on Thursday for a second round of meetings amid the latest conflagration in the Middle East.
The first direct negotiations between the two states since 1993 are intended as preparatory meetings to shape future talks on a deal to normalize ties between the countries.
Thursday’s meeting is expected to focus on extending a shaky ceasefire that has halted fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, long considered by experts as a “state within a state” wielding enormous influence over Lebanon’s political, economic and security spheres.
The technocratic government in Beirut, which came to power in 2025, is juggling dual pressure campaigns — sustained Israeli attacks and seizure of Lebanese territory on one hand and the internal threat of Hezbollah and its Iranian backers on the other.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said on Tuesday that the goal of the negotiations was to “stop hostilities, end the Israeli occupation of southern regions and deploy the [Lebanese] army all the way to the internationally recognized southern borders.”
“We negotiate for ourselves,” Aoun said. “We are no longer a pawn in anyone’s game, nor an arena for anyone’s wars. And we never will be again.”
Paul Salem, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute think tank, told ABC News from Beirut that Thursday’s talks are “historically significant in what they might eventually lead to,” but framed the meetings as the first steps on a long and difficult road.
The government in Beirut is facing “a prolonged conundrum,” Salem said. “Iran is insisting on maintaining its presence and backing Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah seems to be happy to continue to play their role with Iran.”
And in southern Lebanon, Israel seems intent on a devastating campaign and seizure of land which its Defense Minister Israel Katz has repeatedly said will be modeled on the destruction of Gaza.
“The Lebanese state needs to be able to bolster its credibility by not allowing a long-term Israeli occupation,” Salem said.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office told ABC News of the talks that there is “one obstacle: Hezbollah the Iranian proxy holding Lebanon hostage and threatening Israel. Peace through strength: remove Hezbollah and peace becomes possible.”
President Donald Trump’s administration pushed for a ceasefire in Lebanon earlier this month, as the White House sought a pause in the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran. Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel following the first round of talks on April 14 — a ceasefire Netanyahu seemingly had no choice but to support.
But Trump and his top officials have also made clear that Hezbollah cannot be allowed to retain its pre-war clout within the country, nor continue to pose a military threat to Israel.
“We will make Lebanon great again. It’s about time we did so,” Trump said over the weekend.
Ahead of Thursday’s talks, a State Department official told ABC News, “The United States welcomes the productive engagement that began on April 14.”
“We will continue to facilitate direct, good-faith discussions between the two governments,” the spokesperson added.
A tentative ceasefire
Thursday’s talks in Washington will resume amid a tentative U.S.-backed ceasefire, under which Israeli strikes against alleged Hezbollah targets continue in eastern and southern Lebanon.
Under the U.S.-backed deal, Israel retains the right to fire on what it deems an “imminent threat” to its troops. The IDF has fired several times on Hezbollah targets since the ceasefire began on April 17. On Tuesday, Hezbollah said it fired rockets and drones at Israeli forces for the first time since a 10-day truce took effect.
Israeli ground forces are still operating in southern Lebanon, with the goal, according to Israeli officials, of establishing a demilitarized “buffer zone” between the Israeli border and the Litani River, around 18 miles to the north.
The IDF says it is holding approximately 15 positions about six miles deep into southern Lebanon, which it says includes about 50 Lebanese villages. Israeli officials have blamed the Lebanese government for being unable or unwilling to keep Hezbollah away from Israel’s northern border — a responsibility set out in the U.S.-brokered November ceasefire.
The campaign includes the razing of dozens of Lebanese towns and villages, plus the forced — and, at least for some, permanent — displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.
Human Rights Watch said this month that more than a million people across the country have been forced to flee their homes — nearly one-fifth of the entire population of the country. The Israeli evacuation orders have included all of southern Beirut, the suburbs of which are traditionally considered a Hezbollah stronghold.
Israeli action has killed at least 2,294 people and wounded another 7,544 people since March 2, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said last week. The strikes included a barrage of more than 100 strikes within 10 minutes on April 8, killing at least 357 people across the country, Lebanese authorities said.
Israeli health officials say Hezbollah gunfire, rockets and drones have killed 20 Israelis since March 2 and injured hundreds of others.
On March 2, Hezbollah joined Iran in its response to the U.S.-Israeli military campaign launched against Iran on Feb. 28. With those strikes, Hezbollah broke a U.S.-backed cross-border ceasefire that had been in place since November 2024. Hezbollah said the attacks were retaliation for alleged Israeli violations of the same ceasefire.
Hezbollah defied assessments it had been substantially weakened by its two-year involvement in the war in Gaza, firing more than 6,500 munitions toward Israel in the first five weeks of renewed fighting, according to the IDF.
Hezbollah fighters have also inflicted significant casualties on invading Israeli forces. Sixteen Israel Defense Forces troops had been killed in the current round of fighting in Lebanon as of Wednesday. The IDF says it has killed more than 1,800 Hezbollah operatives since March 2.
“Hezbollah is back in business,” Salem said. Israel’s operation “enables Hezbollah to resume its resistance narrative. And it certainly suits Iran to keep the Lebanon front open and active, to keep Israel distracted and to drain some of its resources and attention.”
Dual threats
Within Lebanon, Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam have faced veiled threats from Hezbollah and Tehran.
After the first round of talks in Washington, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said Aoun’s government was “subjecting Lebanon to these humiliations by negotiating directly with the Israeli enemy and listening to its dictates.”
Hezbollah is not a party to the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, which seeks to sideline the Iranian-backed militant group.
Hassan Fadlallah, a Hezbollah member of parliament, has called on Aoun to pull out of the talks. “We will reject and confront any attempt to impose political costs on Lebanon through concessions made to this Israeli enemy,” Fadlallah told AFP this week, though said the group wants “the ceasefire to continue” along with an Israeli withdrawal.
A potential clash between Beirut and Hezbollah has been brewing since the Aoun-Salam government took power last year.
In an unprecedented step, The Lebanese cabinet has repeatedly asserted its ambition for Hezbollah to disarm and has declared all military activity by the group to be illegal. Earlier this month, the cabinet ordered security forces to restrict weapons in Beirut exclusively to state institutions
The state’s all-volunteer Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) is widely considered to be outgunned by Hezbollah, though it has around 80,000 personnel. Polls suggest the LAF is broadly popular among Lebanese people, but its multi-sectarian character has raised questions as to whether it would prove dependable in the event of renewed communal fighting.
But despite Hezbollah’s mauling in the last round of fighting with Israel and the loss of a key neighboring partner with the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2024, observers say the group — which is part of the Lebanese government and holds more than a dozen seats in parliament — retains extensive military and political power, particularly in parts of the capital Beirut and in its southern and eastern heartlands.
Before the outbreak of its latest war with Israel in 2023, estimates of Hezbollah’s military strength ranged from 30,000 to more than 50,000 operatives.
Israeli leaders have committed to an open-ended seizure of parts of southern Lebanon and demanded Beirut’s assistance in the total disarmament of Hezbollah, raising fears that Lebanon’s confessional power-sharing system could fracture and the country slide back into the kind of civil war that killed more than 100,000 people between 1975 and 1990.
Israeli leaders have been clear that they will not tolerate Hezbollah’s presence in southern Lebanon, vowing to keep troops there until the militant group is disarmed.
Risking such a calamity on behalf of Israel — a country which has invaded Lebanon six times since 1978, which is now again occupying parts of the south and which Lebanese authorities say has killed thousands of Lebanese civilians in three and a half years of war with Hezbollah — may be deeply unpopular.
LAF chief Gen. Rodolphe Haykal said on Tuesday that Lebanon “will reclaim every inch of its land under Israeli occupation,” according to a readout posted to the LAF’s X page.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s patrons in Iran — specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — appear unwilling to give up their Lebanese ally, which for decades has been perhaps the most potent proxy within of Tehran’s “forward defense” strategy by which Iran has sought to deter and punish U.S.-Israeli action against it.
Prominent Iranian leaders who survived the initial U.S.-Israeli onslaught demanded that Lebanon be included in the two-week ceasefire announced on April 8. “For years, Hezbollah has been fighting with the Zionist regime, but in the recent war, Hezbollah fought for the Islamic Republic,” parliament speaker and lead Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said.
Others have hinted at costs for Beirut if the government tries to defang Hezbollah. Ali Akbar Velayati — an adviser to Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamanei — for example, said in a post to X this month that Salam “should know that ignoring the unique role of the resistance and the heroic Hezbollah will expose Lebanon to irreparable security risks.”
“Lebanon’s stability rests exclusively on cohesion between the government and the resistance,” Velayati said.
For many Lebanese — Shiites among them — the return to war between Israel, Hezbollah and Iran means more turmoil piled atop years of cascading economic and political crises.
Last month, Salam expressed his own frustration. “This war was imposed upon us,” the Lebanese prime minister said, adding that Beirut “could have avoided it” if Hezbollah had not resumed attacks on Israel.
ABC News’ Chris Boccia and Jordana Miller contributed to this report
Healthcare workers receive training on administering the Ebola vaccine in a study carried out with the support of the World Health Organization as part of the fight against the Ebola virus in Kampala, Uganda on February 14, 2025. (Photo by Nicholas Kajoba/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement on Sunday that a “small number of Americans” are directly affected by an Ebola outbreak occurring in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“The CDC is working with other U.S. agencies to coordinate the safe withdrawal of the Americans,” the CDC said in its statement. The agency did not confirm the number of people affected, the type of exposure or whether any individuals had experienced symptoms.
“We don’t discuss or comment on individual dispositions,” Dr. Satish Pillai, the CDC’s incident manager for Ebola, said during a press briefing on Sunday. “It is a highly dynamic situation, and at this point, what I would say is, we continue to assess, we will continue to keep you posted as we learn more.”
On Saturday, the World Health Organization said in a statement that the ebola outbreak in the DRC and Uganda constituted a “public health emergency of international concern.”
As of Sunday, the CDC said there were 10 confirmed Ebola cases and 336 suspected cases in the DRC. There had been 88 suspected deaths in the DRC, as well as two confirmed cases and one confirmed death in Uganda from people who had traveled to the DRC.
The CDC said that the risk to the American public remains low. Ebola virus spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person and does not spread through casual contact or air.
“CDC has extensive experience and expertise in responding to Ebola outbreaks,” CDC acting Director Jay Bhattacharya said on a call with reporters on Friday. “It is a large outbreak, and we were just informed yesterday about it.”
He added, “We’re absolutely committed to making sure that they can get resources as they need. We have helped with other Ebola outbreaks in the past … We have lots of hard-earned lessons. The key thing here is to know that we are absolutely involved.”
It is the DRC’s 17th outbreak of Ebola since the disease emerged in the 1970s, according to the WHO.
This strain of Ebola is caused by Bundibugyo virus, for which there are no therapeutics or vaccines, the WHO said.
The WHO has declared international public health emergencies over previous Ebola outbreaks as well as COVID-19 and mpox.
A view of the structural damage following air strikes carried out by the Israeli military in the Balata Street and El Basta areas of central Beirut, Lebanon on March 18, 2026. (Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Around 4 a.m. Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces posted an image of several blocks in Beirut’s Bashoura neighborhood, saying in an accompanying “urgent warning” that people inside a building outlined in red should leave immediately.
“To everyone present in the building marked in red on the attached map and the adjacent buildings: You are located near a facility affiliated with the terrorist Hezbollah organization, which the Israel Defense Forces will act against,” Avichay Adraee, an IDF spokesperson, said in the Arabic-language post on social media.
About an hour later an Israeli airstrike targeted the building, reducing it to rubble.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone was inside the building at the time of its destruction. The Lebanese Ministry of Health on Wednesday said at least 10 people had been killed in overnight Israeli strikes on the capital, but did not detail where those killings had taken place. Another 27 people were injured, the ministry said.
The Israeli strikes came amid an escalation of Israel’s efforts to stamp out Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy based in Lebanon and designated by Israel and the United States as a terrorist organization.
Hezbollah on March 2 began firing missiles south into Israel, an act that it said was in support of Iran. Those launches, which effectively marked the end of a fragile ceasefire that began in November 2024, came two days after the United States and Israel launched joint airstrikes on Tehran.
The Israeli Air Force has since retaliated by carrying out strikes on the Lebanese capital and elsewhere in Lebanon, striking targets that Israel describes as Hezbollah-related.
Health officials in Lebanon said at least 912 people have been killed in strikes, along with more than 2,000 people who have been injured. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the conflict, officials said.
Among the Israeli targets have been buildings and sites throughout Lebanon associated with the Al-Qard al-Hasan Association, an organisation said to finance Hezbollah’s operations. Israel, as it posted a grainy video showing an eagle-eyed view the Bashoura-building strike, said it had overnight targeted that group. It did not explicitly link the al-Hasan group to the destroyed building.
Hezbollah has also continued targeting Israel, firing between 50 and 60 rockets overnight into the country’s north, according to the IDF. Most were intercepted, but several made direct hits, damaging property and setting fires, Israel said. Emergency medical services reported no fatalities, but several light injuries.
Israel’s air force has also over the last two weeks targeted sites across Southern Lebanon.
Israel also said on Monday it had begun a “limited and targeted” ground operation across its northern border, where it says it’s seeking to destroy Hezbollah “strongholds.” The IDF added on Tuesday that it was seeking to create an “additional layer of security for residents of northern Israel.”
Telling Lebanese residents they will not be allowed to return to southern Lebanon, Defense Minister Israel Katz has signaled Israel may carve out a buffer zone inside Lebanese territory.
“In recent days, IDF troops from the 36th Division have begun limited and targeted ground operations aimed at enhancing the forward defense area,” the IDF said in a statement. “The troops are continuing efforts to establish the forward defensive posture in order to remove threats and create an additional layer of security for residents of northern Israel.”
Israel on Wednesday issued a broad warning for anyone in southern Lebanon, saying residents south of the Litani River — which is seen in part as a geographic boundary between northern and southern Lebanon — should move north as quickly as they could.
The IDF was expecting to target “crossings” on that river, meaning bridges, in the coming hours, Israel said, adding that it was being “compelled” to carry out those strikes because of Hezbollah’s activities “with the support of the civilian population.”
“For your safety and the safety of your families, immediately move to areas north of the Litani River,” the IDF said on social media on Wednesday. “Remaining south of the Litani River may endanger your lives and the lives of your families. Please note: any movement southward may endanger your lives.”
“Accordingly, and to prevent the transfer of reinforcements and combat means, the Defense Army intends to attack crossings on the Litani River starting from midday hours today,” Adraee, the IDF spokesperson, said on social media.
It was unclear how civilians remaining in the south would be able evacuate to the north if river crossings were destroyed.
