A team of nine people were attacked in a remote area of southeastern Guinea while they were attempting to educate locals on the numerous risks of the Ebola virus, a government spokesman said on Thursday. Eight bodies were reported to be found after the violent assault.
"The eight bodies were found in the village latrine. Three of them had their throats slit," Damantang Albert Camara told Reuters by telephone in Conakry.
Three local administrators, two medical offices, a preacher and three accompanying journalists, were part of the team that was attacked by a hostile stone-throwing crowd from the village when they tried to inform people about Ebola, Guinea's Prime Minister Mohamed Saïd Fofana, speaking in a television message that had been recorded earlier, said.
However, Fofana said seven bodies of nine missing people had been found, Reuters reported.
Following the incident, six people were arrested on Tuesday in Wome, a village close to the town of Nzerekore, in Guinea's southeast, where Ebola was first identified in March.
"Since then the virus has killed some 2,630 people and infected at least 5,357 people, according to World Health Organization (WHO), mostly in Guinea, neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia," according to Reuters. "It has also spread to Senegal and Nigeria."
As residents of affected countries are faced with widespread fears, misinformation and stigma, authorities in the region have to make complicated efforts to contain the highly contagious disease.
Meanwhile, Fofana said it was regrettable that the incident occurred as the international community was mobilizing to help countries struggling to contain the disease.
The Ebola outbreak started in Guinea's remote southeast in February and has since spread across the region. Since it was first recorded in 1976 in what is now Democratic Republic of Congo, more than 2,500 people have died in the outbreak from more than 4,200 infections in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria.
Symptoms of the highly infectious disease are diarrhea, vomiting and internal and external bleeding.
