West African leaders pledge $1 billion to fight Islamist threat

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso - West African leaders have pledged $1 billion to combat the spiraling threat of Islamist militancy in the region, the head of the regional ECOWAS bloc said on Saturday.

Groups with links to Al Qaeda and Islamic State have strengthened their foothold across the arid Sahel region this year, making large swathes of territory ungovernable and stoking local ethnic violence, especially in Mali and Burkina Faso.

The fifteen members of the West African bloc and the presidents of Mauritania and Chad had gathered for an extraordinary summit in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, to address the growing insecurity.

ECOWAS Commission President Jean-Claude Kassi Brou said the commission had decided to "contribute financially and urgently to joint efforts in the fight against terrorism" by pledging $1 billion.

In a speech following the closed meeting, Brou also called on the United Nations to strengthen its MINUSMA peacekeeping mission, which has been based in Mali since 2013.

In July, the U.N. said Islamist attacks were spreading so fast in West Africa that the region should consider bolstering its response beyond current military efforts.

In 2017, five countries - Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Mali and Mauritania - backed by France, launched the G5 Sahel taskforce to combat the insurgents. But the initiative has been perennially underfunded.

The situation in Burkina Faso has deteriorated in particular in recent weeks. An attack in late August killed 24 soldiers, one of the heaviest losses yet in the nation's fight against Islamist militants. Last week, 29 people were killed in separate attacks in its troubled central-northern region.

Once a pocket of relative calm in the Sahel, Burkina has suffered a homegrown insurgency for the past three years, which has been amplified by a spillover of jihadist violence and criminality from its chaotic neighbor Mali.

Large swathes of Burkina's north are now out of control, and France's military Sahel mission began limited operations there earlier this year.

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Al-Qaeda attack on Burkina Faso hotel kills 20

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso - At least 20 people have been killed and others were being held hostage Friday in an ongoing Al-Qaeda attack on a hotel in the capital of Burkina Faso popular with United Nations staff and westerners.

A fire raged in the main entrance of Ouagadougou's four-star Splendid hotel and screams could be heard from inside as Burkinabe forces prepared an assault to rescue hostages still trapped five hours after the assault began.

Officials said French forces could join a counter-attack on the hotel, while a US defence official said Washington would potentially provide surveillance.

The attack comes less than two months after a jihadist hostage siege at the luxury Radisson Blu hotel in the Malian capital Bamako in November, in which 20 people died including 14 foreigners.

"We know that there are victims and there are hostages. Currently the area is blocked by security forces waiting for an assault to free the hostages," Foreign Minister Alpha Barry told AFP.

Around 10 vehicles were on fire in the streets near the hotel in Ouagadougou, not far from the city's international airport.

The head of the city's main hospital confirmed at least 20 dead and another 15 injured, and witnesses said the assailants were still holed up in the 147-room hotel.

A restaurant opposite the hotel was also attacked and a staff member, reached by telephone, said several people had been killed, but was not able to give an exact toll.

- Sporadic fire -

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility for the attack, according to US-based monitoring group SITE.

The "mujahideen brothers" of AQIM "broke into a restaurant of one of the biggest hotels in the capital of Burkina Faso, and are now entrenched and the clashes are continuing with the enemies of the religion", SITE quoted the group as saying.

Sporadic exchanges of fire could be heard between the attackers and security forces near the hotel, which often has UN staff among its guests and has security checks at its entrances. Firefighters were also at the scene.

Barry said Burkina Faso may enlist the support of French special forces, who have a permanent presence in the country, to deal with the unfolding situation, and a US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington could provide drone-based surveillance.

An AFP reporter at one point saw three men clad in turbans firing at the scene on Avenue Kwame Nkrumah, one of Ouagadougou's main thoroughfares.

A witness also reported seeing four assailants who were of Arab or white appearance and "wearing turbans".

The French embassy said on its website that a "terrorist attack" was underway and urged people to avoid the area. An Air France flight from Paris to Ouagadougou was diverted to neighbouring Niger.

The Burkinabe army meanwhile revealed that an armed group had carried out an attack earlier in the day near the border with Mali, killing two people.

"In the afternoon around 2:00 pm (1400 GMT), around 20 heavily-armed unidentified individuals carried out an attack against gendarmes in the village of Tin Abao," the army said in a statement, adding that an officer and a civilian had been killed and two people were wounded.

- Unprecedented attack -

Several attacks have taken place in Burkina Faso in recent months, but no such assaults have yet hit the capital.

In April the Romanian security chief of a mine in northern Tambao was kidnapped in a move claimed by Al-Murabitoun, a jihadist group run by notorious Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

Al-Murabitoun claimed November's Mali hotel attack -- although another jihadist group from central Mali has also said it was responsible for the siege in which some 150 staff and guests were held hostage for several hours.

Burkina Faso is part of the G5 Sahel grouping that counts the fight against terrorism as part of its remit.

It has also offered support to France's Barkhane counter-terror mission, spanning five countries in Africa's restive Sahel region, and French special forces are stationed in Ouagadougou's suburbs.

Last month, Burkina Faso swore in Roch Marc Christian Kabore as president, completing the troubled West African state's transition after the overthrow of its longtime ruler Blaise Compaore in 2014 and a failed coup attempt in September.

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Ebola vaccine promising in first human trials: NIH

WASHINGTON - Researchers say they are one step closer to developing an Ebola vaccine, with a Phase 1 trial showing promising results, but it will be months at the earliest before it can be used in the field.

The news comes amid the worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever, which has killed 5,500 people so far, mostly in West Africa.

Pharmaceutical companies and health agencies scramble to fast-track experimental drugs and vaccines that could help.

In the first phase of testing, all 20 healthy adults injected with a higher or lower dose of the vaccine developed antibodies needed to fight Ebola, said the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which conducted the study.

Results were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"The unprecedented scale of the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa has intensified efforts to develop safe and effective vaccines," said Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is developing the vaccine alongside GlaxoSmithKline.

The vaccines under development "may play a role in bringing this epidemic to an end and undoubtedly will be critically important in preventing future large outbreaks," he noted.

"Based on these positive results from the first human trial of this candidate vaccine, we are continuing our accelerated plan for larger trials to determine if the vaccine is efficacious in preventing Ebola infection," he added.

But the NIAID/GSK vaccine is still a long way from being ready for use in the field.

The NIAID is "in active discussions with Liberian officials and other partners about next-stage vaccine testing in West Africa" for efficacy and safety, the NIH said, but no announcement on larger-scale trials was expected before early next year.

There is no licensed treatment or vaccine against the Ebola virus, which is transmitted through bodily fluids and has been fatal in an estimated 70 percent of cases in the current outbreak.

Antibodies within four weeks

The volunteers were injected starting in September, and each showed a positive result for Ebola antibodies in blood tests within four weeks.

The 10 volunteers in the higher-dose group developed higher antibody levels, the NIH said.

In addition, two of the lower-dose group and seven of the higher-dose group developed a kind of immune cell called CD8 T cells, which are an important part of the body's response against disease.

"We know from previous studies in non-human primates that CD8 T cells played a crucial role in protecting animals" who got the vaccine and then were exposed to Ebola, said researcher Julie Ledgerwood, the trial’s principal investigator.

None of the volunteers experienced serious side effects within the study period, though two had a brief, mild fever within the 24 hours after the injection.

The vaccine uses a modified chimpanzee cold virus to deliver segments of genetic material from the Ebola virus.

The genetic material cannot spread in the body like the virus does, but can still prompt the antibody response.

The version tested at NIH contains material from two species of Ebola -- the Zaire species, responsible for the outbreak in West Africa, and another called Sudan Ebola.

"This work is encouraging and another significant contribution to efforts to tackle the Ebola crisis," said Dr Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust.

The White House also congratulated the vaccine researchers.

"We congratulate Drs Francis Collins and Tony Fauci and their teams at the National Institutes of Health on the first published results from Phase 1 clinical trials of a promising Ebola vaccine candidate," a White House statement said, adding that President Barack Obama would visit the NIH next week.

A second version of the vaccine, aimed at blocking just Zaire Ebola, also began human testing in October, at the University of Maryland.

Another experimental vaccine that has shown promising results in primates is the Canadian VSV-EBOV, licensed by US firm NewLink Genetics. It is also in early stages of human testing.

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US nurses voice Ebola concerns

Several dozen nurses at a Washington hospital demonstrated Wednesday outside the White House, saying they are woefully ill-prepared to handle an Ebola case.

They were among thousands of health care workers taking part in protests in the United States and overseas amid fears the Ebola epidemic might spread beyond West Africa.

"Ebola is just one plane ride away," said emergency room nurse Kelly Fields of Providence Hospital in Washington, where unionized nurse staff are negotiating their first collective agreement with management.

In blue scrubs and red union T-shirts, the nurses demanded an ample supply of full-dress protective suits as well as the training to use them.

"It's a major concern for us... It only takes one person to come to our emergency room and from there we're really not sure what to do," said intensive care nurse Aster Goitom.

Two nurses are among the nine confirmed Ebola cases that have been treated in the United States. Both women had helped to care for a Liberian man who died of the virus in a Texas hospital.

In a statement, Providence Hospital, which is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, said it was prepared to identify and treat patients with highly communicable diseases, including Ebola.

National Nurses United, the biggest nurses' union in the United States, said it expected 100,000 nurses in 15 states to join what it called Global Ebola Awareness Day protests.

Similar demonstrations were scheduled to take place Wednesday in Australia, Canada, Ireland, the Philippines and Spain, it said in a statement.

The United States has more than 2.7 million registered nurses, according to the Kaiser Foundation, a national health policy think tank.

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Ebola hits 5th W. African state as Senegal confirms 1st case

DAKAR - The Ebola epidemic that has killed more than 1,500 people across West Africa spread to a fifth country in the region on Friday with the first confirmed case of the deadly virus in Senegal.

The case marks the first time a new country has been hit by the outbreak since July and comes a day after the World Health Organization warned the number of infections was increasing rapidly.

Scientists meanwhile said the first human trials of a potential vaccine would start next week using a product made by pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline and the US government.

On Friday, scientists writing in the journal Nature said 18 lab monkeys given high doses of the Ebola virus fully recovered after being given the prototype drug ZMapp, which reversed bleeding in the animals.

ZMapp has been given to a handful of frontline health workers who have contracted Ebola, two of whom have recovered, and two of whom have died. Three others are still receiving the treatment.

Senegal's health ministry said the country's first Ebola patient was a young Guinean man who was immediately quarantined at a Dakar hospital, where he was in a "satisfactory condition".

The man is believed to have been infected in Guinea's capital Conakry, and may have travelled to Senegal before Dakar closed its land border with Guinea on August 21.

Authorities are now scrabbling to piece together where he went and who he encountered, in a bid to halt the spread of the deadly virus.

New figures released by the WHO on Thursday revealed the massive scale of the crisis, which it said indicated a "rapid increase still in the intensity of transmission" that could cost at least $490 million (370 million euros) to tackle.

In a sign that affected countries are struggling to stop its spread, the UN agency said the number of cases could exceed 20,000 before the epidemic is brought under control.

- Under surveillance -

Never before has there been an Ebola outbreak so large, nor has the virus -- which was first detected in 1976 -- ever infected people in West Africa until now.

As of August 26, 1,552 people had been confirmed dead from Ebola in four countries -- Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria.

Liberia was the worst affected with 694 deaths; 422 people have died in Sierra Leone; and 430 in Guinea, where the virus emerged at the start of the year. Nigeria has now recorded six deaths.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has also confirmed two cases of Ebola, but officials there insist it is unconnected to the current outbreak in West Africa.

Sierra Leone President Ernest Koroma on Friday sacked health minister Miatta Kargbo.

A presidential statement read on state television said the decision was made "in order to create a conducive environment for more efficient and effective handling of the Ebola outbreak."

Nigeria's latest death -- in the southeastern oil city of Port Harcourt -- was the first outside its biggest city, Lagos, and dashed hopes that the country had successfully contained the virus.

The victim, a doctor named Ikyke Samuel Enuemo, is believed to have caught the virus from a patient he treated who travelled to the city after coming into contact with an infected Liberian-American man.

Some 160 people are now under surveillance in Port Harcourt following the doctor's death, the local government said on Friday.

Meanwhile a curfew was imposed in N'Zerekore, Guinea's second-largest city, a day after 20 people were injured during a protest by market stall holders against a team of health workers sent, without notice, to spray their market with disinfectant.

- A shield around the region -

In a bid to stop the spread of the virus, many African governments have sought to ringfence Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

But member states of the West African regional bloc ECOWAS complained Thursday that some of the security measures taken by other countries, including travel bans, had unfairly hit the region.

A number of airlines, including Air France and British Airways, have suspended their services to Freetown and Monrovia, the capitals of Sierra Leone and Liberia respectively.

Bruce Aylward, the WHO's head of emergency programmes, said it was "absolutely vital" that airlines resume flights because bans were hindering the emergency response.

The outbreak has also caused sporting chaos, with Sierra Leone having to field all players for the qualifying games for the African Cup of Nations from outside the country over a growing quarantine.

Morocco, which will host the tournament next year, said on Friday it was launching a national commission tasked with drawing up a health plan to deal with the risk from Ebola.

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Ebola outbreak moving fast, experts warn

GENEVA - The Ebola epidemic is moving faster than the authorities can handle and could take six months to bring under control, the medical charity MSF said Friday.

The warning came a day after the World Health Organization said the scale of the epidemic had been vastly underestimated and that "extraordinary measures" were needed to contain the killer disease.

The UN health agency said the death toll from the worst outbreak of Ebola in four decades had now climbed to 1,069 in the four afflicted West African countries -- Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

"It is deteriorating faster, and moving faster, than we can respond to," Joanne Liu, the chief of Doctors without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, told reporters in Geneva.

She added that it could take six months to get the upper hand.

"It is like wartime," she said a day after returning from the region. "I don't think we should focus on numbers. To really get a reality check, we're not talking in terms of weeks, but months" to control the epidemic."

WHO said Thursday it was coordinating "a massive scaling up of the international response" to the epidemic.

"Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak," it said.

The epidemic erupted in the forested zone straddling the borders of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia earlier this year, and later spread to Nigeria.

WHO declared a global health emergency last week -- far too late, according to MSF, which months ago warned that the outbreak was out of control.

Liu said while Guinea was the initial epicentre of the disease, the pace there has slowed, with fears now focused on the other countries.

"If we don't stabilise Liberia, we'll never stabilise the region," Liu said.

Concerns have also centred on the Nigerian cases, which are in Lagos, sub-Saharan Africa's largest city.

"Right now we have no past experience of Ebola within an urban setting," said Liu.

Athletes barred

As countries around the world stepped up measures to contain the disease, the International Olympics Committee said athletes from Ebola-hit countries had been barred from competing in pool events and combat sports at the Youth Olympics opening in China on Saturday.

The decision, which affects three unidentified athletes, was made "to ensure the safety of all those participating" in the Games in the city of Nanjing, the IOC and Chinese organisers said.

No cure or vaccine is currently available for Ebola, with the WHO authorising the use of largely untested treatments in efforts to combat the disease.

Hard-hit nations are awaiting consignments of up to 1,000 doses of the barely tested drug ZMapp from the United States, which has raised hopes of saving hundreds.

Canada says between 800 and 1,000 doses of a vaccine called VSV-EBOV, which has shown promise in animal research but never been tested on humans, would also be distributed through the WHO.

MSF's Liu warned against focusing on drugs.

"In the short term, they're not going to help that much, because we don't have many drugs available. We need to a get a reality check on how this could impact the curve of the epidemic," she said.

The last days of an Ebola victim can be grim, characterised by agonising muscular pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and catastrophic haemorrhaging described as "bleeding out" as vital organs break down.

The cost of tackling the virus is also threatening to take a severe toll on the already impoverished West African nations hit by the epidemic.

In Nigeria, in particular, a more serious outbreak could severely disrupt its oil and gas industry if international companies are forced to evacuate staff and shut operations, rating agency Moody's has warned.

'Hostility to health workers'

Sierra Leone's chief medical officer Brima Kargbo this week spoke of the risks facing health workers fighting the epidemic, which has killed 32 nurses since May as well as an eminent doctor, a tenth of the country's fatalties.

"We still have to break the chain of transmission to separate the infected from the uninfected," Kargbo said.

Nigerian sex workers also reported suspicion from customers, with business down drastically. One woman in Lagos who gave her name as Bright told AFP that Ebola was "worse than HIV/AIDS. You can prevent HIV by using condoms but you can't do the same with Ebola."

Across the region, draconian travel restrictions have been imposed and a number of airlines have cancelled flights in and out of West Africa.

Guinea, where at least 377 people have died, became the latest country to declare a health emergency, ordering strict controls at border points and a ban on moving bodies from one town to another.

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Asia on alert with thermal cameras, doctors as Ebola declared global risk

BANGKOK - Asian nations are using thermal imaging cameras and posting doctors at airports to screen out sick travellers as health authorities scramble to avert any outbreak of the Ebola virus that has killed almost 1,000 people in West Africa.

The four nations of Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone are struggling to combat the world's worst outbreak of Ebola, which has a fatality rate of up to 90 percent, with no known vaccine or cure.

The World Health Organisation declared the West Africa epidemic an "extraordinary event" and an international public health emergency on Friday.

There have been no confirmed cases of the virus in Asia, but health authorities who have battled deadly viruses, such as bird flu and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in recent years, were dusting off the drills used for those outbreaks.

Their measures included infra-red thermal imaging cameras to screen air passengers with fevers and public awareness campaigns. Most countries have told citizens to consider postponing travel to affected areas.

Asia's efforts to screen visitors were adequate, said Tarik Jasarevic, a WHO spokesman based in Geneva.

"As long as a person is not visibly sick we think it's fine for them to be in public," he told Reuters by telephone. "We consider the risk for international spread quite low. The measures countries in Asia have taken are appropriate."

Health officials in Thailand, which received a record 26.5 million tourists last year, are monitoring 21 visitors from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. The officials said they had no plans to quarantine the visitors.

"They are free to move but we are checking in on them frequently," said Opart Karnkawinpong, a disease control official at Thailand's Ministry of Public Health.

"We have surveillance cameras in place at major entry points and doctors at international airports to supplement existing teams."

MEASURES IN PLACE

The Ebola virus is only transmitted through contact with the body fluids of someone with symptoms, which initially include muscle pains and joint aches, then worsen to vomiting, diarrhoea and internal and external bleeding in the final stages.

In China, there were no reports of Ebola cases but hospitals have been told to report any suspected cases.

India, which has nearly 45,000 citizens living and working in the four affected countries, said it would screen travellers passing through, or starting journeys there, when they returned.

"The surveillance system would be geared up to track these travellers for four weeks and detect them early, in case they develop symptoms," Health Minister Harsh Vardhan told parliament on Wednesday.

Japan is ready to send suspected Ebola victims to special isolation hospitals, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference.

In Australia, authorities said they had not taken extra steps but airports were on alert for sick travellers, saying the risk of the disease reaching the country was "very low".

Officials in Singapore said the city state, praised for its tough measures against the SARS outbreak that claimed 33 lives in 2003, also faced only a low threat from the Ebola virus.

"Measures are already in place to carry out contact tracing and quarantine all close contacts if there is a case," the health ministry said.

In Thailand, health official Opart said the 21 travellers would stay under observation for the entire incubation period, which can last up to 21 days.

"Even though Ebola is only a small risk to Thailand we are not taking any chances," he said.

(Additional reporting by Thuy Ong in SYDNEY, Rachel Armstrong in SINGAPORE, Aung Hla Tun in YANGON, Kaori Kaneko in TOKYO and Nita Bhalla of the Thomson Reuters Foundation in NEW DELHI; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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Saudi suspects case of Ebola infection

RIYADH - Doctors in Saudi Arabia are testing a patient suspected of having contracted Ebola during a trip to West Africa, hit by an epidemic of the virus, the health ministry said Tuesday.

The Saudi man was admitted to hospital in the Red Sea city of Jeddah after showing symptoms of haemorrhagic fever upon his return from Sierra Leone.

The patient, in his 40s, is in critical condition and has symptoms "similar to that of Ebola infection."

Ebola-like symptoms include fever, vomiting, severe headaches and muscular pain and, in the final stages, profuse bleeding.

The UN World Health Organisation said Monday that at least 887 people have died from Ebola since the beginning of the year, after the virus spread across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

In April, Saudi Arabia announced a ban on visas for Muslims in the three West African nations wishing to perform the pilgrimage to the Muslim holy sites there.

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