Congo further delays elections in Ebola zone

Democratic Republic of Congo's already long-delayed election set for Sunday will be postponed for months in certain communities where a deadly Ebola virus outbreak has infected hundreds of people, the country's electoral commission announced Wednesday.

CENI (Commission Electorale Nationale Indépendante) said in a statement on Wednesday that election in the eastern cities of Beni and Butembo in North Kivu province and the western city of Yumbi - in Bandundu province - will take in March next year.

Voting will take place in the rest of the country, the statement added. There is an ongoing Ebola outbreak in the eastern part of the country with calls for the vote to be postponed. More than 320 people have so far been killed in the outbreak - the second worst in history.

The latest outbreak started in May 2018. Congo's election has been delayed for more than two years, leading to sometimes deadly protests. Opposition parties have said they will not accept further delays of the vote to choose a successor to longtime President Joseph Kabila. The election already had been pushed from December 23 to Sunday after a fire in the capital, Kinshasa, destroyed voting materials.

Ethnic violence in the western part of the country left at least 100 people dead last week.

The electoral commission said official results of the presidential poll will be announced on January 15.

Since November 28, there have been more than 500 confirmed cases of the deadly virus in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

More than 46 million Congolese have registered to take part in the poll that has been repeatedly delayed.

Twenty-one candidates are competing for the country's top job.

The DRC, a country of more than 80 million people, has not seen a peaceful transition of power since it gained independence from Belgium in 1960.

Holding the election in the Ebola zone has posed complications, but authorities have said they were preparing for the vote by deploying tons of hand sanitizer for use in polling stations, where people will tap on the touchscreens of voting machines to choose candidates. Ebola is spread via the bodily fluids of infected people.

Authorities also have said people entering the polling stations will be screened for fevers. Meanwhile, more than 52,000 people in the region have received an experimental but promising Ebola vaccine.