The election delays have set off violent protests over the past week, and security forces have responded by firing tear gas and live ammunition into crowds. Protesters burned parts of the Ebola triage center in Beni and looted it, walking off with chairs and tables, according to the Ministry of Health.

Photos taken by Sami Kavota, a candidate in local elections, showed tarpaulin burned and ripped off metal structures at the center. Plastic gloves were scattered on the ground.

Aruna Abedi, the deputy director of the government’s Ebola response, said that protesters had also attacked its offices in Beni before United Nations peacekeepers pushed them back. Demonstrators were “chanting songs hostile to the government and demanding elections,” she told Reuters. “They threw projectiles.”

Local politicians have denounced the election delays as an attempt to disenfranchise a swath of a population that would back the regime’s two main opponents, Felix Tshisekedi, the son of a charismatic opposition leader, and Martin Fayulu, a former Exxon manager.