A NEW epidemic of the Ebola virus has erupted in the east of the Democractic Republic of Congo (DRC), claiming 46 lives, Health Minister Mashako Mamba said on Friday. The epidemic is centered in an area in the rebel-controlled northeast of the country, near Sudan and Uganda, Mamba said over state radio, citing information provided by the UN World Health Organization. The Ebola virus derives its name from a river in the northwest of the DRC where it was first identified in 1976. A second epidemic in 1995, in the Kikwit area 350 kilometers (about 200 miles) east of Kinshasa, claimed 220 lives. The international scientific community has been unable to pinpoint the source of the incurable virus, which kills 80 percent of its victims after several days of agony.