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DRC’s is the fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak ever recorded, with 5,794 confirmed cases and 2,786 deaths.

The fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak in history has reached two new health zones in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with a total of 60 areas now affected, according to the latest government figures.

The two new zones affected are Biena and Manguredjipa in DRC’s North Kivu province, where the fatality rate is much higher than the overall rate of 48 percent, partly due to delayed response efforts, according to data by the Ministry of Health released on Friday.

The ministry said the outbreak in DRC has recorded 5,794 confirmed cases, including 2,786 deaths, and is spreading at an unprecedented speed – faster than efforts to track and slow it.

Efforts to contain the outbreak have been hampered by armed conflict in the affected provinces, displacement, attacks on medical personnel and facilities, a mobile working population, and a lack of critical infrastructure.

The outbreak is now on track to surpass the deadliest Ebola epidemic on record – the 2014 to 2016 outbreak in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people.

Meanwhile, aid group Doctors Without Borders – known by its French acronym MSF – said on Friday it had opened a new treatment centre in Beni in North Kivu in the country’s northeast to enable a faster response in what it said was one of the hardest-hit areas.

Beni has recorded 122 confirmed cases and 87 deaths since the start of the outbreak in mid-May, with an Ebola fatality rate of close to 69 percent, one of the highest in the country, according to the latest government figures.

Aid workers have said that a shortage of bed capacity is one of the factors hampering the response to the outbreak. The new centre “enables the rapid treatment of patients, strengthens contact tracing and supports the health authorities in their efforts to contain the spread of the virus,” MSF said in a statement.

There is no approved vaccine or treatment for this particular strain of Ebola, known as Bundibugyo, which is rarer than the virus type behind most past outbreaks. This means that relief workers are more reliant on traditional methods like tracing contacts and ⁠isolating patients to try to control ⁠its spread.

MSF currently has 1,400 staff in DRC supporting the response, ‌and operates ‌treatment centres with a total of 400 beds.

“Early diagnosis and treatment as soon as the first symptoms appear significantly increase people’s chances of survival, whilst reducing the risk of transmission ‌ within families and communities,” MSF emergency coordinator Albert Stern said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Thursday that Ebola is spreading faster than efforts to contain it.

“The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the fastest-spreading Ebola epidemic ever recorded,” he said in a post on US social media company X. “It’s growing faster and wider than the response to contain it.

“We know how to contain Ebola and save lives. The world must urgently step up action to get it under control.”

Yemen’s Ministry of Information denounces Houthi attacks on Marib as ‘escalation’ that threatens lives and increases suffering.

Yemen’s Houthis have launched several strikes on the government-held city of Marib, also hitting residential neighbourhoods, according to local authorities.

The group hit the city with four ballistic missiles and four drones on Saturday, causing several injuries and damage to homes, vehicles and property, Marib’s provincial authority said.

A fifth ballistic missile later in the day also injured one person, Marib governorate officials said on X.

A sixth ballistic missile was launched by the Houthis towards Marib overnight, officials added early on Sunday.

It described the strikes as part of an “ongoing assault that threatens the lives of civilians, displaced persons’ camps, and residential neighbourhoods”.

Marib hosts the largest number of internally displaced people in Yemen, with more than two million of the roughly five million Yemenis forced from their homes over the course of the war living there.

Video footage verified by Al Jazeera showed destruction in the aftermath of Saturday’s strikes.

Yemen’s Ministry of Information said on X that the continued targeting of Marib’s densely populated areas marked a dangerous “escalation” that threatens lives and increases suffering.

The attacks on Marib came alongside clashes further south, where Yemeni government forces claimed drone strikes killed three fighters from the Iran-backed Houthis on Saturday, including field commanders, and wounded others along the Maqbanah front west of Taiz.

A separate strike destroyed a Houthi military vehicle in Jabal al-Zuhayb, killing several more fighters, a military source told the Yemeni News Agency (Saba).

The attacks are part of a rapid escalation that has gripped Yemen since early August, when Houthi missile and drone strikes on military camps in Marib and Hadramout killed at least 30 government soldiers, the deadliest single episode of the conflict in years.

Days later, Houthi missiles killed at least two civilians and wounded 14 in Marib, and further strikes killed seven people in the port city of al-Makha (Mocha).

The Houthis, backed by Iran, control much of Yemen’s northern territory, including the capital, Sanaa.

United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg warned the UN Security Council on Thursday that Yemen faces its highest risk of returning to full-scale war since the UN-brokered truce of April 2022, as fighting has intensified on multiple fronts and threatens to unravel more than four years of relative calm.