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The accident in the makeshift mine occurred on Friday about 3pm local time (13:00 GMT) following heavy rains in the town of Kamituga in South Kivu province. The mine was not located on the Kamituga gold concession owned by the Canadian miner Banro Corporation, the company's chief executive said. Thousands of informal miners operate in and around mines in DRC, which produces more than half of the world's cobalt, a key component in electric car batteries. Mining accidents are common, with dozens of deaths every year in mines where often ill-equipped diggers burrow deep underground in search for ore. Last...

The eastern DR Congo province of South Kivu has recorded its first confirmed cases of Ebola in the country's year-old epidemic, one of which was a fatality, the provincial government said Friday. "Two cases which tested positive for Ebola were confirmed overnight in South Kivu, in Lwindi district in the Mwenga region," it said in a statement South Kivu Governor Theo Ngwabidje told reporters: "Teams from the national anti-Ebola coordination campaign arrived yesterday to provide support." The disease is spread by contact with infected bodily fluids and is fought with time-honored but laborious techniques of tracing contacts and quarantining them....

BUKAVU, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Gunmen killed a policeman and kidnapped five Chinese nationals near a mine in southeast Democratic Republic of Congo overnight, a local official and an army spokesman said on Sunday. It was not clear who carried out the attack near the village of Mukera in South Kivu province. Relations are already strained between Chinese mining companies and local authorities, who say some firms are operating illegally without licenses. "An armed group exchanged fire with police. Five Chinese nationals were kidnapped," Major Dieudonne Kasereka, the army spokesman in the region, said. A spokesperson at the...