World

FREETOWN/KINSHASA — The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday it had shut a laboratory in Sierra Leone after a health worker there was infected with Ebola, a move that may hamper efforts to boost the global response to the worst ever outbreak of the disease.

At least 1,427 people have died and 2,615 have been infected since the disease was detected deep in the forests of southeastern Guinea in March. A separate outbreak was confirmed in Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday.

The WHO has deployed nearly 400 of its own staff and partner organisations to fight the epidemic of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever, which has struck Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria.

Nigeria's health minister said on Tuesday his country had "thus far contained" the Ebola outbreak, with only one of 13 confirmed cases being treated in isolation.

The WHO said it had withdrawn staff from the laboratory testing for Ebola at Kailahun — one of only two in Sierra Leone — after a Senegalese epidemiologist was infected with Ebola.

"It's a temporary measure to take care of the welfare of our remaining workers," WHO spokesperson Christy Feig said, without specifying how long the measure would last. "After our assessment, they will return."

Feig said she could not assess what impact the withdrawal of WHO staff would have on the fight against Ebola in the Kailahun, the area hardest hit by the disease.

One of the deadliest disease known to man, Ebola is transmitted by contact with body fluids and the current outbreak has killed at least 120 healthcare workers.

The Senegalese medic — the first worker deployed by WHO to be infected — will be evacuated from Sierra Leone in the coming days, Feig said. He is currently being treated at a government hospital in the eastern town of Kenema.

With its resources stretched by the West African outbreak, medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Tuesday it could provide only limited help to tackle Congo's outbreak.

A report from the UN mission in Congo on Tuesday said 13 people there had died from Ebola, including five health workers.

Congo said on Sunday it would quarantine the area around the town of Djera, in the isolated northwestern jungle province of Equateur, where a high number of suspected cases has been reported. It is Congo's seventh outbreak since Ebola was discovered in 1976 in Equateur, near the Ebola river.

"Usually, we would be able to mobilise specialist haemorrhagic fever teams, but we are currently responding to a massive epidemic in West Africa," said Jeroen Beijnberger, MSF medical coordinator in Congo. "This is limiting our capacity to respond to the epidemic in Equateur Province."

However, the charity said it would send doctors, nurses and logistics experts to the region and would work with the government to open an Ebola case management centre in Lokolia.

Congo's Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said on Sunday the outbreak in Equateur was a different strain of the virus from the deadly Zaire version in West Africa.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf issued orders on Tuesday that any official of ministerial rank who had not returned to their duties would be dismissed. Civil servants who failed to report for work would also have their salaries suspended, a presidency official told Reuters.

Some Liberian officials have been fleeing the country or just not turning up at work for fear of contracting the virus, prompting President Ellen Johnson on Tuesday to issue orders threatening those of ministerial rank with dismissal.

MINSK — The presidents of Russia and Ukraine hold key talks Tuesday with little hopes for a breakthrough in resolving the raging conflict pitting Kiev against pro-Moscow separatist rebels.

Hours before the crunch talks, Kiev ratcheted up tensions by releasing footage purporting to show 10 Russian soldiers captured on its territory who a Moscow military source claimed had crossed into Ukraine "by accident”.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian leader Vladimir Putin arrived in Minsk for a meeting with top EU officials, and the leaders of Kazakhstan and Belarus, in a bid to defuse tensions that some fear could trigger all-out war between Kiev and and its Soviet master Moscow.

US National Security Adviser Susan Rice slammed Russia for "military incursions" into Ukraine using artillery, air defence systems, tanks and troops, that she said represented a "significant escalation" in the conflict.

"Repeated Russian incursions into Ukraine unacceptable. Dangerous and inflammatory," she wrote on Twitter.

Soldiers captured 

Kiev's security service said paratroopers from Russia's 98th airborne division were captured about 50 kilometres  southeast of the main rebel stronghold of Donetsk.

Ukrainian media on Tuesday aired footage purporting to show the captured Russian paratroopers confessing to entering Ukraine in armoured convoys.

"We travelled here in columns not along the roads but across the fields," says one of the men who identifies himself as corporal Ivan Milchakov from the 331st parachute regiment based in central Russia.

"I didn't even see when we crossed the border."

Kiev has long accused Moscow of stoking the separatist insurgency raging in its east, but this is the first time Ukrainian authorities have claimed to have captured soldiers from Russia's regular army.

"Officially, they are at exercises in various corners of Russia. In reality, they are participating in military aggression against Ukraine,” Defence Minister Valeriy Geletey said on his Facebook page.

Moscow has repeatedly denied any involvement in the rebellion in Ukraine and demands Kiev halt its punishing offensive.

A Russian defence ministry source described the captured soldiers Tuesday as having crossed into Ukraine "by accident".

The soldiers had been "taking part in patrolling a section of the Russian-Ukrainian border; they crossed it most likely by accident, on an unequipped, unmarked section", Russian news agencies quoted the source as saying.

Peace talks? 

On the ground there appeared no end in sight to the four months of conflict that has already claimed some 2,200 lives, and has sent tensions between Russia and the West soaring to levels not seen since the end of the Cold War in 1991.

Ukraine's forces accused Russian troops of trying to open a "new front" after an armoured convoy crossed onto government-held territory Monday in the south of Donetsk region.

An AFP journalist reported seeing smoke rising from the town of Novoazovsk close to the Russian border, where Ukraine's military said fighting was raging with pro-Russian rebels.

Local authorities in the main rebel bastion of Donetsk said three civilians were killed in shelling overnight as the army pummels insurgent fighters hunkered down there.

The Ukrainian military meanwhile said that 12 soldiers had been killed and 19 wounded in the past 24 hours.

Fighting has intensified in the run-up to the key talks in Minsk with the rebels appearing to launch a counteroffensive after losing swathes of territory to a push by government forces.

It was unclear whether Poroshenko and Putin would hold bilateral talks during the meeting in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

The two met briefly in France at ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings at the beginning of June.

Officials from the EU and Russian-led Customs Union were set to discuss the crisis as well as trade following the signing of key political and economic agreements by Ukraine's new pro-Western leaders with the European Union in June.

It was the refusal by former president Viktor Yanukovych to ink the EU deal last year, instead choosing to favour Moscow's economic bloc, that sparked the protests that eventually led to his ouster, and set in motion a chain of events that has seen the Russian annexation of Crimea and the pro-Moscow insurgency in the east.

As Ukraine's political transition continues, Poroshenko on Monday announced long-awaited early parliamentary elections for October 26.

The Kremlin also ratcheted up the pressure by announcing plans to send another aid convoy into eastern Ukraine "this week".

Russia unilaterally sent about 230 lorries carrying what it claimed was 1,800 tonnes of humanitarian aid to the rebel-held city of Lugansk on Friday after accusing Kiev of intentionally delaying the mission. Kiev condemned the move as a "direct invasion".

Some 400,000 people have fled their homes since April in fighting that has left residents in some besieged rebel-held cities without water or power for weeks.

DAKAR/LONDON — One of three African doctors infected with Ebola and treated with the experimental drug ZMapp has died in Monrovia, Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown said on Monday.

Liberia, the West African country where Ebola is spreading fastest, received three doses of the rare treatment on August 13. Initially, Liberia said the three doctors, Zukunis Ireland and Abraham Borbor from Liberia and Dr. Aroh Cosmos Izchukwu from Nigeria, were responding well to the treatment, raising optimism about the experimental therapy.

Asked to confirm the death of doctor Borbor, Brown said: "That is correct. He died yesterday."

Two US aid workers who caught Ebola in Liberia were declared free of the virus and released from an Atlanta hospital last week after receiving the same treatment. But a Spanish priest who received ZMapp died.

The drug's US-based manufacturer, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, says limited supplies have already been exhausted and producing more will take time. There are other drugs in the pipeline but all are unproven and have yet to clear even the earliest stage of clinical trials.

UK Ebola victim

The family of a British volunteer nurse repatriated from Sierra Leone after contracting the deadly Ebola virus said on Monday he was in the best place possible for treatment.

William Pooley, 29, is the first Briton to test positive for the haemorrhagic fever that has killed almost 1,500 people, mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, in the deadliest outbreak of the disease to date.

Pooley was flown home from West Africa on Sunday in a specially adapted Royal Air Force cargo plane and transported to an isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London.

"Will is receiving excellent care at the Royal Free Hospital and we could not ask for him to be in a better place," his family said in a statement, praising the speed at which he was brought home and asking the media to respect their privacy.

"We would like to thank all our family and friends for their best wishes and ask everyone to remember those in other parts of the world suffering with Ebola who do not have access to the same healthcare facilities as Will."

British health officials say strict protective measures have been taken to minimise the risk of transmission while transporting and treating Pooley.

A spokeswoman from Britain's Department of Health said British officials were trying to locate supplies of experimental therapies being used to treat Ebola but any decision to use them would be made by the clinicians and the patient.

Pooley's colleagues praised the bravery of the healthcare worker, who was reported to have been working as a volunteer at a hospice in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown since March before volunteering at an Ebola centre in Kenema five weeks ago.

Gabriel Madiye, executive director of the Shepherd's Hospice in Freetown, said the nurse was aware of the risks of dealing with Ebola patients but was determined to help as other medical staff had left, fearful of catching the virus.

"We consider him a hero. Somebody who is sacrificing to provide care in very difficult circumstances — when our own health workers are running away," Madiye told the BBC.

The hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 1,427 people in the deadliest outbreak of the disease to date. In the week through to August 22, 297 new suspected, probable and confirmed cases of Ebola were reported in Liberia — the largest number of weekly cases since the epidemic began in March, according to a United Nations Children's Fund report.

Ebola can kill up to 90 per cent of those infected though the fatality rate in the current epidemic is around 60 per cent.

KIEV — A column of Russian tanks and armored vehicles entered southeastern Ukraine around dawn Monday, a Ukrainian official said — a move that brings the conflict to an area that has so far escaped the intense fighting of recent weeks.

The reported incursion came a day ahead of a summit that includes both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and could be aimed at pressuring Ukraine into seeking a negotiated end to the conflict rather than a military victory.

Over the past month, Ukrainian forces have made substantial inroads against pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine, taking control of several sizeable towns and cities that had been under rebel control since April, when the clashes began.

But the advances have come at a high cost — more than 2,000 civilians reportedly killed and at least 726 Ukrainian servicemen. There is no independent figure for the number of rebel dead, although Ukrainian authorities said Monday that 250 rebels were in fighting around Olenivka, a town 25 kilometres  south of Donetsk.

Intense fighting and shelling persists for the two major rebel-held cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's National Security Council, told reporters that the column of 10 tanks, two armored vehicles and two trucks crossed the border near the village of Shcherbak, and that shells were fired from Russia towards the nearby city of Novoazovsk. He said they were Russian military vehicles bearing the flags of the separatist Donetsk rebels. The village is in the Donetsk region, but not under the control of the rebels.

The Ukrainian National Guard later said two of the tanks had been destroyed.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday he had no information about the column.

The reported incursion and shelling could indicate an attempt to move on Mariupol, a major port on the Azov Sea, an arm of the Black Sea. Mariupol lies on the main road between Russia and Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed in March. Capturing Mariupol could be the first step in building a slice of territory that links Russia with Crimea.

Although Mariupol is in Ukraine's separatist Donetsk region, most of the fighting between rebels and Ukrainian troops has been well to the north. A full offensive in the south could draw Ukrainian forces away from the city of Donetsk.

Lysenko said Mariupol for now has enough defenders "to repel any attack of uninvited guests".

Still, a wider war in the east would put new strains on Ukraine's military, which initially struggled with longtime underfunding and disorganisation against the rebel threat.

Ukraine of late has appeared bent on beating the rebels militarily, but pressure is growing for a negotiated settlement. German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with Poroshenko on Saturday and called for a political solution.

Poroshenko and Putin are among a group of leaders gathering Tuesday in Minsk, Belarus, for a summit, but it’s unclear whether they will meet one-on-one to discuss the crisis.

Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said Monday that he hoped European Union officials, who will also be at the summit, "will come prepared to use their influence on the Ukrainian side".

Ukraine and the West say that Russia is supporting and supplying the rebels. NATO says since mid-August, Russia has fired into Ukraine from across the border and from within Ukrainian territory. Moscow denies those allegations.

Fighting continued elsewhere in the east, notably around Olenivka. Lysenko said Monday about 250 separatists had been killed in that fighting, but did not specify in what time period. On Sunday, rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko said two-thirds of Olenivka had been wrested away from Ukrainian control.

Ukrainian forces had made significant inroads against the separatists in recent weeks, but the rebels have vowed to retake lost territory.

Russia announced plans, meanwhile, to send a second aid convoy into rebel-held eastern Ukraine, where months of fighting have left many residential buildings in ruins.

Russia's unilateral dispatch of over 200 trucks into Ukraine on Friday was denounced by the Ukrainian government as an invasion and condemned by the United States, the European Union and NATO. Even though the tractor-trailers returned to Russia without incident Saturday, the announcement of another convoy was likely to raise new suspicions.

Lavrov said the food, water and other goods the convoy delivered Friday to the hard-hit rebel city of Luhansk were being distributed Monday, and that Red Cross workers were involved in talks on how best to do that. There was no immediate confirmation from the Red Cross.

In sending in the first convoy, Russia said it had lost patience with what it called Ukraine's stalling tactics. It claimed that soon "there will no longer be anyone left to help" in Luhansk, where weeks of heavy shelling have cut off power, water and phone service, and made food scarce.

The Ukrainian government had said the aid convoy was a ploy by Russia to get supplies to the rebels and slow down the government's military advances.

KIEV/DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukraine marked its independence day on Sunday with a military march-past in Kiev intended to send a message of defiance to Russia, but pro-Moscow rebels countered by parading captured Ukrainian troops through the streets of their main stronghold.

The rival events highlighted the divide that will have to be bridged if a compromise on Ukraine is to be reached on Tuesday when Russian President Vladimir Putin meets his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko for the first time in months.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who visited Kiev on Saturday to try to lay the ground-work for a peace deal, said Tuesday's talks were unlikely to produce a breakthrough.

Kiev's forces are trying to crush a pro-Moscow separatist revolt in the east of Ukraine, and on Sunday intense artillery fire could be heard around the main rebel bastion of Donetsk.

On Independence Square in the Ukrainian capital Kiev — scene of protests that pushed out a Moscow-backed president in February and precipitated the current crisis — President Poroshenko reviewed columns of men and armoured vehicles.

Some of the troops in the march-past were shortly heading to the front line in eastern Ukraine, Poroshenko said.

In an emotional speech, he said his country was fighting "a war against external aggression, for Ukraine, for its freedom, for its people, for independence".

"It is clear that in the foreseeable future, unfortunately, a constant military threat will hang over Ukraine. And we need to learn not only to live with this, but also to be always prepared to defend the independence of our country," he said.

Poroshenko announced about $3 billion would be spent on re-equipping the army in 2015-2017. Ukraine's armed forces are only a fraction of the size of those in Russia.

After Ukraine's previous president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled to Russia, Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in March and parts of the Russian-speaking east rebelled against Kiev.

Kiev and its Western allies accuse Moscow of funnelling weapons and men secretly into eastern Ukraine to shore up the struggling rebellion, a claim Moscow denies. Russia has called for an urgent ceasefire to provide help to trapped civilians.

In separatist-held Donetsk, about 100 people introduced over a public address system as Ukrainian prisoners-of-war were marched through the city's central Lenin Square on Sunday.

They looked dirty and unshaven and bowed their heads as they passed. Some had bandaged arms and heads. They were guarded by rebel fighters with guns, their bayonets fixed.

People who came to watch the parade shouted "fascists!" and "murderers!" and some threw bottles at the POWs. Two street-cleaning machines followed the column, spraying water on to the street in a theatrical gesture to indicate the men were unclean.

Earlier on Sunday, artillery shells hit the grounds of one of Donetsk's biggest hospitals. Authorities in Kiev deny targeting civilian areas.

"This is no independence day. This is a plague on our land, the fascists who have taken control of Kiev who are now shooting at hospitals and morgues," said Grigory, 71, at a display of captured military hardware in central Donetsk.

Diplomats say Tuesday's meeting between Putin and Poroshenko in the Belarussian capital Minsk may provide the best chance yet of ending a conflict that has left ties between Moscow and the West at their most toxic since the Cold War and has sparked sanctions that are hurting the Russian and European economies.

The two presidents last met in June in a frosty encounter in Normandy, France, at commemorations to mark the World War II D-Day landings. They did not shake hands. Since then, the momentum in the conflict has tilted in Ukraine's favour.

With strong Western backing and progress on the battlefield, Kiev is now in a much stronger position. Putin, meanwhile, faces the stark choice of a humiliating defeat for the rebels or giving them direct help and so risking further sanctions that will inflict deeper pain on his economy.

The meeting in Minsk "certainly won't result in a breakthrough", Merkel told Germany's ARD television. "But you have to talk to each other if you want to find solutions."

The European Union's chief diplomat, Catherine Ashton, will be at the meeting to help mediate. On Sunday, Ashton said the meeting provided "an opportunity we should not miss".

The sound of shelling in Donetsk on Sunday was unusually intense, with rebels saying the Ukrainian troops were trying to score a victory to mark their national day.

Separatist commanders said they were holding off the attacks and were launching their own counterassaults.

Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People's Republic”, said his forces had launched a counterattack and were fighting to take the town of Olenivka, about 20km south of Donetsk.

"I don't want to fight, I don't want to kill anyone, but I will fight to the last for my land," he told reporters. "We want to live the way we want to live on our own soil."

The Ukrainian military authorities said they had been making more advances on the battlefield, though the rebel collapse some in Kiev had predicted has not materialised.

Ukraine's border guard service said there had been several rounds of shelling into Ukraine from Russian artillery units, echoing similar allegations made by NATO officials.

Officials in Kiev said 722 people with Ukrainian government forces had died to date, a jump from 568 announced on August 11.

SRINAGAR, India — Four people were killed when nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan traded heavy fire across their border early Saturday, with each country accusing the other of "unprovoked" military action.

"Two civilians were killed" and four people injured, including a paramilitary soldier, on the Indian side of the international frontier when Pakistani forces opened fire, Indian police inspector-general Rajesh Kumar told AFP.

On the other side of the frontier, two Pakistani civilians — a woman and a 60-year-old man — "were martyred" by Indian fire, a senior Pakistani military official said.

The neighbours accused each other of starting the pre-dawn firing.

The countries have been exchanging almost daily charges of violating a decade-old ceasefire since India scrapped last Monday bilateral talks with Pakistan.

New Delhi called off the talks over meetings between Pakistan's high commissioner (ambassador) and Kashmiri separatists.

The latest Pakistani fire targeted several Indian border posts, Indian police said. Many villagers living close to the border in the R.S. Pura area of disputed Indian Kashmir have been evacuated due to Pakistani firing, Kumar told AFP.

But Pakistani officials said Indian troops initiated Saturday's "unprovoked firing", hitting the Sialkot region facing the south of Indian Kashmir where another civilian was killed by Indian fire last month.

"Indian Border Security Forces again resorted to unprovoked firing in the Chaprar and Harpal sectors," the Pakistani senior military official told AFP.

Last month, Indian police accused the Pakistani army of killing a soldier during border firing in the same region.

On August 8, in a brief moment of goodwill between the nations, Pakistan freed an Indian soldier captured after he was swept into the Pakistani zone of Kashmir when his patrol boat capsized.

Pakistan described the cancellation of the bilateral talks as a "setback" for relations and asserted the meetings with Kashmiri separatists were a traditional practice ahead of talks with India "to facilitate meaningful discussions".

The unresolved territorial dispute over Kashmir has been a huge source of tension between the neighbours who have fought three wars since the subcontinent's 1947 partition and independence from Britain.

Insurgency and the rivalry with Pakistan has made Muslim-majority Indian Kashmir one of the world's tensest regions with an estimated 500,000 Indian troops deployed in the territory.

Relations collapsed between India and Pakistan after Pakistani gunmen attacked India's commercial hub Mumbai in 2008, leaving 166 people dead.

Violence has fallen in the region since 2004 when the countries began a peace process, but there are sporadic rebel attacks on government forces while Indian Kashmiris often accuse government forces of human rights abuses.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Sierra Leone voted to pass a new amendment to its health act, imposing possible jail time for anyone caught hiding an Ebola patient, a practice the World Health Organisation believes has contributed to a major underestimation of the current outbreak.

The new law, an update to the country's 1960 Public Health Act, was passed on Friday and imposes prison terms of up to two years for violators, said lawmaker Ansumana Jaiah Kaikai.

The measure was necessary to compel residents to cooperate with government officials, Kaikai said, noting that some residents had resisted steps to combat Ebola including the construction of isolation centres in their communities.

"This amendment seeks to address these emerging bottlenecks," he added. The amendment now goes for presidential assent.

The country's health ministry warned back in June that it was a serious crime to shelter someone infected with Ebola.

Sierra Leone has been hit hard by the current outbreak, recording at least 910 cases and 392 deaths, according to figures released Friday by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

A total of 2,615 infections and 1,427 deaths have been recorded across West Africa.

These numbers don't capture all cases in part because families hide patients, fearing high fatality rates and the stigma that comes with a positive diagnosis, the UN health agency said in a situation assessment released Friday.

New treatment centres in Liberia are being overwhelmed by patients that were not previously identified, suggesting an "invisible caseload" of patients that is going undetected, the WHO said.

Countries in the region and elsewhere in Africa have continued to impose travel restrictions, even though this hasn't been recommended by the WHO.

Ivory Coast announced late Friday it was closing land borders with neighbouring Guinea and Liberia. Gabon, Senegal, South Africa and Cameroon had all earlier in the week imposed restrictions on some or all of the four countries with confirmed Ebola cases.

On Saturday, the Philippine government said it was recalling 115 peacekeepers from Liberia because of the health risk posed by Ebola.

Speaking in parliament on Friday, Sierra Leone majority leader Ibrahim Bundu accused development partners of being slow to respond to the Ebola crisis and said Sierra Leone had suffered "abandonment and isolation from those we viewed to be our biggest friends" in the region and beyond.

"These ugly developments are evidenced in the cancellations of flights, closing of borders, reduction of operational hours of banks and further isolation by shutting down businesses at the time of greatest need," he said.

He said lawmakers would soon review the country's partnerships "so as to form a permanent record of who are true friends are”.

KIEV — German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday the standoff over Ukraine could be solved but only if control was tightened over the Ukraine-Russia border across which, the West alleges, Russia has been funnelling arms to help a separatist rebellion.

Merkel was visiting Kiev as a prelude to a meeting next week between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders that diplomats say is the best chance in months of a peace deal in eastern Ukraine, where government forces are fighting pro-Moscow rebels.

She arrived as tensions flared up again. NATO has alleged Russia’s military is active inside Ukraine helping the rebels, and Moscow angered Kiev and its Western allies by sending an aid convoy into Ukraine against Kiev’s wishes.

“There must be two sides to be successful. You cannot achieve peace on your own. I hope the talks with Russia will lead to success,” Merkel said, looking ahead to the meeting on Tuesday involving Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko.

“The plans are on the table, about how you can achieve peace and good cooperation between the countries. 

“Now actions must follow,” she told a news briefing.

She said the main obstacle was the lack of controls along the nearly 2,000km border. She proposed a deal between Kiev and Moscow on monitoring of the frontier by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

“Now we need a two-sided ceasefire linked to a clear controlling of the Russian-Ukrainian border, otherwise peace won’t be achieved,” Merkel said.

Diplomats say Merkel came to Kiev with two objectives: Primarily to show support for Kiev but also to urge Poroshenko to be open to peace proposals when he meets Putin next week in the Belarus capital, Minsk.

Poroshenko, whose forces have been forcing the rebels to retreat, said Kiev had offered ceasefires before and they were flouted. He said no peace deal was worth sacrificing Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and placed the blame at Russia’s door.

“Ukraine is ready and capable of guaranteeing a peaceful settlement,” Poroshenko said. “What is stopping us are the foreign mercenaries. Take the people with guns out of our territory.... and peace in Ukraine will be quickly restored.”

Hours before Merkel’s plane landed in Kiev, there was heavy artillery bombardment in Donetsk, the main separatist stronghold on the east of Ukraine, near the border with Russia. Reuters reporters saw apartments destroyed and puddles of blood, where, according to residents, two civilians were killed.

Reuters photographer saw three dead bodies of civilians in the eastern part of Donetsk 7km from the centre after shelling in the afternoon.

Witnesses said the bodies belonged to a family which had run out of their home to take cover in a bomb shelter.

The unusually intense shelling may be part of a drive by government forces to achieve a breakthrough against the rebels in time for Ukrainian independence day, which falls on Sunday.

Truck convoy

The conflict in Ukraine has dragged Russian-Western relations to their lowest point since the Cold War and drawn trade sanctions that are hurting already-fragile economies in Europe and Russia.

A convoy of about 220 white-painted trucks rolled into Ukraine on Friday through a border crossing controlled by the rebels after days waiting for clearance.

Moscow said the trucks moved in without Kiev’s consent because civilians in areas under siege from Ukrainian government troops were in urgent need of food, water and other supplies. Kiev called the convoy a direct invasion, a stance echoed by NATO, the United States and European leaders.

The OSCE said its monitors on the border had counted all 227 vehicles that entered Ukraine in the convoy coming back out again into Russian territory.

A Ukrainian military spokesman said however that some of the trucks had been loading up production equipment from military plants in Ukraine. The spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, said the equipment was taken from the Topaz plant which makes Kolchuga, a type of radar system, and from a factory in Luhansk which produces firearms’ magazines.

In Brussels, NATO said it had reports of Russian troops engaging Kiev’s forces inside Ukraine —fuelling Western allegations that the Kremlin is behind the conflict in an effort to undermine the Western-leaning leadership in Kiev.

“Russian artillery support — both cross border and from within Ukraine -— is being employed against the Ukrainian armed forces,” said NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu.

A Ukrainian military spokesman in Kiev, Andriy Lysenko, said Ukrainian government forces were now coming under cross-border fire from Russia, using Grad and Uragan missiles, over a 400km length of the border.

The Russian foreign ministry called the allegations “groundless”. Russia accuses Kiev, with the backing of the West, of waging a war against innocent civilians in eastern Ukraine, a mainly Russian-speaking region.

The crisis over Ukraine started when mass protests in Kiev ousted a president who was close to Moscow, and installed leaders viewed with suspicion by the Kremlin because of their pro-Europe policies.

Soon after that, Russia annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea, and a separatist rebellion broke out in eastern Ukraine. In the past weeks, the momentum has shifted towards Ukraine’s forces, who have been pushing back the rebels.

The separatists are now encircled in their two strongholds, Luhansk and Donetsk.

Reuters reporters in Donetsk said that most of the shelling was taking place in the outskirts, but explosions were also audible in the centre of the city.

JOHANNESBURG — Surviving sickness can make you stronger.

So while a western corner of Africa writhes in the deadly grip of the Ebola virus, there are signs this emergency may serve as a wake-up call to strengthen spending and investment on public healthcare in the world's least developed continent.

"If anything, I think it is teaching us something," Mustapha Sidiki Kaloko, the African Union's Commissioner for Social Affairs, told reporters in Addis Ababa this month.

"It is not only a question of response... it goes back to the issue of strengthening our health systems. Prevention is always better than cure," Kaloko said.

One often-repeated reason for the devastating rapacity of the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea is that those three small states were already weakened by poverty and a decade of interlocking civil wars.

Deaths from the Ebola epidemic, the world's worst of this highly lethal virus which has also touched Nigeria, have topped 1,300 and are still climbing.

Ironically, the disease struck Liberia and Sierra Leone at a time when their governments had been ramping up health spending: Their total expenditure on health as a percentage of GDP was the highest in sub-Saharan Africa in 2012, at 15.5 and 15.1 per cent respectively, compared to 6.3 per cent in Guinea, 6.1 per cent in Nigeria, and 8.8 per cent in South Africa, WHO statistics show.

But the two states' war-ravaged health systems were still very fragile. Liberia had one doctor for every 70,000 people, Sierra Leone one for every 45,000, compared to one for every 360 people in Britain and one for every 410 in the United States.

And with medical workers bearing the brunt of the disease, the underfunded and understaffed health structures of these West African neighbours have been overwhelmed by the onslaught of Ebola, which kills up to 90 per cent of those it infects.

Extrapolate this to sub-Saharan Africa's unenviable health condition: A frequently cited WHO assessment shows the region accounting for 11 per cent of the world's population, yet bearing 24 per cent of its global disease burden and commanding less than 1 per cent of global health expenditure.

Ebola was first detected in Central Africa in 1976. The current outbreak is a grim hark-back to the dark spectres of disease, war and poverty that have hamstrung Africa's advance for decades. Many believe it should ring a shrill alarm bell for the region's governments, and their donor backers, to pay more attention to public health development.

In early August, as the spreading emergency tainted an African leaders' summit in Washington, the World Bank pledged $200 million to help Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim made a point of saying that besides the emergency response, the intention must also be to "help to build up public health systems in West Africa to strengthen the region's disease control capacity".

Less wars, longer lives

Bisected through the middle by the Equator, Africa is the most tropical of continents, exposing hundreds of millions of its people to conditions conducive to the spread of pandemic diseases like malaria. Tuberculosis is another major killer.

The region also still suffers from the highest caseload of HIV/AIDS on the planet, a huge debilitating burden.

"Africa is not a healthy continent," audit, tax and advisory group KPMG said a 2012 report, saying the continent lagged the world on all health indicators, including life expectancy.

"The main contribution to longer lives in Africa has been through conflict resolution; the countries that have made the most remarkable progress are simply those in which wars have been resolved," the KPMG report said, citing dramatically improved longevity in Liberia, as well as Eritrea and Angola.

Despite this, progress in basic health has been made, with Africa child and infant mortality rates falling sharply in recent years, from almost 85 per 1,000 live births in 2004 to under 65 in 2012, though they remain the highest in the world.

Since 2001, the annual number of new HIV infections among adults in sub-Saharan Africa declined by 34 per cent, the UNAIDS agency said in a report on the global AIDS epidemic for 2013.

Healthcare expenditure in Africa has been rising too, according to World Bank data, though at $95 per capita in 2012 it was less than a tenth of the global average of over $1,000.

Spending by African governments on health has often been overshadowed by other perceived priorities, such as big-ticket infrastructure projects linked to economic growth ambitions.

‘Soft’ vs ‘hard’ priorities

"The challenge of course is that Africa is deficient in all infrastructure, soft and hard, but the sort of obsession in the last couple of years has been around funding for hard infrastructure, commerce-enabling projects, roads, bridges, railways, expanding ports and so on," said Simon Freemantle, a political economist at Standard Bank.

Freemantle said if the Ebola emergency could draw attention to the need to also fund "soft" social infrastructure — health and education — this would be a "positive takeaway".

"In order for Africa to unlock any of its demographic opportunity, we have to see the institutions supporting people improve dramatically," he said.

Meanwhile, African spending on other kinds of hardware is increasing. In 2013, Africa had the largest relative rise in military spending of any region in the world, 8.3 per cent, to reach $44.9 billion, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Oil producers Angola and Algeria topped Africa's military spenders.

Yet, even modest increases in health spending are seen going a long way towards improving African health indicators, including tackling outbreaks of haemorrhagic diseases like Ebola.

"We know how to prevent diseases like this, if we can get the basic level of the healthcare systems up to speed," said Columbia Business School Professor Amit Khandelwal.

"That doesn't cost very much money.”

World Bank Director of Health, Nutrition and Population Olusoji Adeyi said enough information existed on "best buys" for governments to improve public health. These included cost-effective childhood vaccines for illnesses such as measles.

Whatever financial boost for Africa's health that does result from the Ebola emergency, it will be too late for hundreds already facing the disease's merciless threat in West Africa.

"Our people are dying... Time is of the essence," Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma said on Friday as he appealed for more urgent help from the world.

MOSCOW — Russia said on Thursday it was investigating dozens of McDonald's restaurants, in what many businessmen said was retaliation for Western sanctions over Ukraine they fear could spread to other symbols of Western capitalism.

Russia's food safety watchdog said it was looking at possible breaches of sanitary rules at McDonald's, but many in the business community said it was a reflection of the deterioration in relations between Russia and the West over Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country are fighting against government forces.

"Obviously, it's driven by the political issues surrounding Ukraine," said Alexis Rodzianko, president and CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia.

"The question on my mind is: Is this going to be a knock on the door, or is this going to be the beginning of a campaign?"

Russia earlier this month slapped bans on Western food imports after Washington and Brussels imposed economic sanctions in response to Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and its backing of the separatists.

In a sign of growing frustration at the threat to trade, several mid-tier Russian businessmen signed off on a letter by British entrepreneur Richard Branson calling on politicians to stop the conflict.

"We, as business leaders from Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the world, urge our governments to work together to ensure we do not regress into the Cold War misery of the past," the letter said.

McDonald's, which opened its first store in Russia in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1990, is a very visible symbol of American capitalism in Russia, where it now has 438 branches.

The food safety watchdog ordered the closure of four of its restaurants in Moscow on Wednesday, including that first Russian branch, which is the busiest in the firm's global network.

The watchdog said on Thursday it was starting unscheduled checks in several Russian regions, including Sverdlovsk and Tatarstan in the Urals, the central Voronezh region and the region around the capital.

"We are aware of what is going on. We have always been and are now open to any checks," a McDonald's Russia spokeswoman said.

Vulnerable businesses

So far no other prominent Western brand has reported coming under extra scrutiny from the Russian authorities, though there were Russian media reports that Jack Daniels was being investigated. The whiskey producer said it would challenge any accusations about its quality.

Amrest, the Warsaw-listed holder of the Russian franchises for several other iconic US brands — Starbucks, KFC, Pizza Hut and Burger King — said last week it had experienced no problems and was doing well.

"We are monitoring closely recent geopolitical developments, to make sure we can adapt to changing conditions and minimise business risks," said AmRest's Chairman Henry McGovern during a teleconference with investors last week.

Nevertheless, big foreign brands are viewed as vulnerable.

French bank Societe Generale published on Thursday a research note saying companies generating most revenues in Russia and therefore most exposed to political risks were BP, British American Tobacco, BASF, Carlsberg, Coca-Cola, Alstom and E.ON.

Even some of McDonald's rivals came to its defence.

"This is a major blow to relations between the two countries," Mikhail Goncharov, the owner of Russian fast-food chain Teremok, told RBC Daily, a newspaper.

"Even the Soviet Union was maintaining those relations because the first McDonald's opened during the USSR times, and PepsiCo factories continued to function regardless of political crises," he added.

Since McDonald's first broke into Russia, it has for many Russian consumers been overshadowed by hundreds of swanky French and Japanese restaurants in the Russian capital, but it remains a powerful symbol, and therefore a prominent target.

On Thursday, outside the shuttered restaurant on Moscow's Pushkin Square, the closure stirred patriotic sentiment among some people.

"They occasionally kick us with different sanctions. Why can't we do something in return? Moreover, McDonald's is such a symbol of everything Western, I think it is a good symbolic step that shows that we have some teeth," said Ivan.