Amid deadly Ebola outbreak, Congolese soldiers fire in air to disperse election protesters

Soldiers and police in the city of Beniin eastern Congo fired in the air on Thursday to disperse demonstrators who barricaded roads and burned tires to protestthe decision to exclude them from apresidential election thisSunday.

The electoral commission (CENI) announced Wednesday that it was cancelling the vote in Beni, its surrounding areas and the nearby city of Butembo due to theEbola outbreak and militia violence.

Those places on the eastern DRC are strongholds of opposition to outgoing President Joseph Kabila,and local politicians denounced the move as an effort to swing the vote in favour of his preferred candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary.

"There was a group of demonstrators who wanted to enter the CENI office ... to demand the withdrawal of the decision," said Giscard Yere, a Beni resident. "But the police officers and soldiers who were there fired to disperse the demonstrators."

'Tear gas and gunfire'

Dozens of protesters waved Congolese flags as they marched down Beni's main boulevard. Most shops in the city of several hundred thousand people remained closed, residents said.

"They went to the mayor's office and then the CENI office. There is tear gas and gunfire," said Teddy Kataliko, a local civil society leader.

Beni, Butembo and the rural areas around them have been dealing with an Ebola outbreak now the second deadliest in history since August, but health authorities had repeatedly saidit would not prevent the vote from going ahead.

The CENI also cancelled the vote in the western city of Yumbi because of ethnic violence there last week that killed more than 100 people.

The election to replace Kabila, who has governed since replacing his assassinated father in 2001, was meant to take place in 2016 but has been repeatedly delayed.

That has triggered violent protests in which security forces killed dozens of people. It has also stoked militia violence in Congo's eastern borderlands with Rwanda and Uganda as armed groups moved to exploit a perceived power vacuum.

Shadary is facing two main challengers in a field of 21 candidates: Felix Tshisekedi, the president of Congo's largest opposition party, and Martin Fayulu, a former Exxon Mobil manager and national lawmaker.

EU ambassador ordered out

The government ordered the European Union ambassador to leave the country within 48 hours after the EU prolonged sanctions against the ruling party's presidential candidate.

The foreign minister's order, seen by The Associated Press, called the EU ambassador's comportment "reprehensible" and came after weeks of pressure by Congo's government to have the EU sanctions lifted on Shadary. The order asks the European Council "urgently" to recall its envoy.

The EU last year sanctioned Shadary, a former interior minister, for obstructing Congo's electoral process and for a crackdown against protesters angry over the long-delayed vote. It was meant to be held in late 2016.

The EU this month prolonged the asset freeze and travel ban against Shadary, and more than a dozen other people, days after Congo Foreign Minister Leonard She Okitundu pleaded with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to lift the sanctions, even for a "probationary period."

There was no immediate comment from the EU ambassador, Bart Ouvry. Congo has resisted what it considers international meddling in the election, vowing to fund the vote itself. Western observer groups are notably absent.