1 new Ebola death confirmed in Congo, bringing total to 12

Another person has died in Congo of a confirmed case of Ebola, bringing the number of fatalities from the latest outbreak to 12, the country's health ministry said Sunday.

A health care worker takes the temperatures of passengers at Ngobila Beach in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Thursday May 24, 2018. Congo's fight to rein in a deadly Ebola outbreak has authorities crossing the border to buy up available thermometers, a World Health Organization official said, as the health ministry on Thursday announced that confirmed cases had reached 30, including eight deaths. (AP Photo/John Bompengo)

The death happened in Iboko, a rural area in northwestern Equateur province, the health ministry said in a statement. There are also four new suspected cases in the province, the statement reported.

Congo now has 35 confirmed Ebola cases.

Health workers have identified people who have been in contact with the patients in the confirmed Ebola cases in three areas in Equateur province, Iboko, rural Bikoro and Mbandaka, the provincial capital of 1.2 million that is a transport hub on the Congo River.

A health care worker takes the temperatures of passengers at Ngobila Beach in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Thursday May 24, 2018. Congo's fight to rein in a deadly Ebola outbreak has authorities crossing the border to buy up available thermometers, a World Health Organization official said, as the health ministry on Thursday announced that confirmed cases had reached 30, including eight deaths. (AP Photo/John Bompengo)

Congolese Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga flew by helicopter to Bikoro and Iboko on Saturday to see the deployment of health workers who will be tracing people who have been in contact with Ebola cases and inoculating them with a new experimental vaccine. The vaccination campaign in the two rural areas is set to begin Monday.

Representatives of the World Health Organization and UNICEF accompanied the health minister.

Health care workers are transported at Ngobila Beach in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Thursday May 24, 2018. Congo's fight to rein in a deadly Ebola outbreak has authorities crossing the border to buy up available thermometers, a World Health Organization official said, as the health ministry on Thursday announced that confirmed cases had reached 30, including eight deaths. (AP Photo/John Bompengo)

The vaccination campaign is already underway in Mbandaka, where four Ebola cases have been confirmed. About 100 health workers have been vaccinated there as front-line workers face high risk from the virus, which is spread via contact with the bodily fluids of those infected, including the dead.

The next few weeks are crucial in determining whether the outbreak announced in May can be brought under control, according to the World Health Organization. Complicating factors include its spread to a major city, that health workers are among those infected and the existence of three or four "separate epicenters," making finding and monitoring the contacts of infected people more difficult.

Passengers wait to have their temperature taken by health care workers at Ngobila Beach in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Thursday May 24, 2018. Congo's fight to rein in a deadly Ebola outbreak has authorities crossing the border to buy up available thermometers, a World Health Organization official said, as the health ministry on Thursday announced that confirmed cases had reached 30, including eight deaths. (AP Photo/John Bompengo)

WHO is using a "ring vaccination" approach, targeting the contacts of people infected or suspected of infection and then the contacts of those people. More than 600 contacts have been identified.

WHO also is accelerating efforts with nine neighboring countries to try to prevent the Ebola outbreak from spreading there, saying the regional risk is high. It has warned against international travel and trade restrictions.

In this photo taken Friday, May 25, 2018, UNICEF staffer Jean Claude Nzengu, center, talks with members of an Ebola vaccination team as they prepare to administer the vaccine in an Ebola-affected community in the north-western city of Mbandaka, in Congo. An Ebola vaccination campaign is under way in Mbandaka, the city of 1.2 million on the Congo River where four Ebola cases have been confirmed. (Mark Naftalin/UNICEF via AP)

"I am personally committed to ensuring that we do everything we can to stop this outbreak as soon as possible," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a meeting in Geneva on Saturday.

This is Congo's ninth Ebola outbreak since 1976, when the hemorrhagic fever was first identified.

There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. The virus can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain.

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani authorities are investigating the shooting death of a man who had been acquitted of killing accused Indian spy Sarabjit Singh in a Lahore prison in 2013, a police official said Sunday.

Pakistan has previously accused India’s intelligence agency of being involved in killings inside Pakistan, saying it had credible evidence linking two Indian agents to the deaths of two Pakistanis last year.

The man who died in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Sunday was Amir Tamba. He was a suspect in the death of Sarabjit Singh, an Indian national who was convicted of spying in Pakistan and handed a death sentence in 1991.

But Singh died in 2013 after inmates attacked him in a Lahore prison. His fate inflamed tensions between the two South Asian nuclear-armed rivals.

Tamba and a second man went on trial for Singh’s death but were acquitted in 2018 due to lack of evidence.

The deputy inspector general of police in Lahore, Ali Nasir Rizvi, said gunmen entered Tamba’s house and shot him. They fled the scene on a motorbike. Officials from Pakistan’s army and intelligence agency reached the site and removed Tamba’s body, taking it to the city's Combined Military Hospital.

Rizvi said a case had been lodged against unidentified assailants but gave no further information about the case, including a possible motive for the attack.

There was slow coverage of Tamba’s death in Pakistan's media. However, Indian outlets were quick to report on the shooting. There was no immediate comment from the Indian authorities.

Singh was arrested in 1990 for his role in a series of bombings in Lahore and Faisalabad that killed 14 people. His family said he was innocent.

Last year, both the United States and Canada accused Indian agents of links to assassination plots on their soil. India dismissed the allegation of its involvement in the killing in Canada as “absurd."

In the case involving the U.S., India’s foreign ministry said it had set up a high-level committee to investigate the accusations, adding that the alleged link to an Indian official was “a matter of concern” and “against government policy.”

This story has been updated to correct that Tamba's killing occurred Sunday, not Saturday.

FILE - Indian Sikhs shout slogans against Pakistan as they display photographs of Sarabjit Singh, center, a convicted Indian spy who was on Pakistan's death row, died from a head injury after two inmates attacked him with a brick in a Lahore jail, during a protest in Kolkata, India, Thursday, May 2, 2013. A Pakistani police official says an investigation has begun after a man suspected in a fatal attack on an imprisoned Indian national more than a decade ago was shot dead at his home in the eastern city of Lahore. (AP Photo/Bikas Das, File)