Covid-19 raises the risks of violent conflict

BUNIA, A DUSTY city of perhaps 650,000 in Ituri, a province of eastern Congo, has long known war. Since the start of this year, rebels have burned dozens of villages to the ground and hacked hundreds of people to death with machetes. A rebel group made up of assailants from the seed-sowing Lendu tribe has launched a series of attacks on the pastoralist Hema. The government hospital in the city is overrun with patients. “We have people wounded with machetes, with gunshots, women with amputated limbs, people with fractures,” says John Katabuku, a doctor working there. “When the displaced arrive we look after them for free—they have lost everything. But it is difficult for the hospital. We really do not have the means.”