A first Ebola case has been confirmed in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s South Kivu province, in an area under the Rwanda-backed M23 militia’s control, the armed group’s spokesman said Thursday.

Efforts to get a grip on the latest outbreak of the deadly haemorrhagic disease, which the World Health Organization has declared an international emergency, have been hampered by the DRC’s long-running conflicts, including that between the Congolese army and the M23.

Having seized swathes of land in the mineral-rich east with Rwanda’s help, the M23 has set up to govern for the long run in areas under its control, installing a parallel administration to the Congolese government.

But the armed group has never had to manage the response to a serious epidemic of a disease like Ebola, which has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa in the past half-century.

According to the M23 spokesman, tests “confirm a new positive case” from the South Kivu provincial capital Bukavu, which fell into M23 hands in February 2025. But the case involved a “person coming from Kisangani”, a major city in the eastern Tshopo province where no Ebola infections from the current outbreak have so far been recorded.

AFP