Health workers in Sierra Leone have been attacked while attempting to bury the bodies of five Ebola victims near the capital city of Freetown, a police official said.

A struggle broke out Saturday between a group of youths and a burial team, forcing the health workers to abandon the five victims' bodies and flee from the street, according to Sgt. Edward Momoh Brima Lahai. The burial was completed only after police reinforcements arrived.

The attack comes just days after residents in the Guinean town of Womme stoned and bludgeoned to death eight members of a delegation intended to educate the villagers about Ebola and show them how to avoid contracting the disease.

Sierra Leone is currently in the midst of a three-day lockdown which has sought to fight the spread of the disease by confining the nation's six million people indoors.

Spain to evacuate infected missionary

Spain, meanwhile, has said it will evacuate Catholic medical missionary Brother Manuel Garcia Viejo, who for 12 years has run a hospital in the Sierra Leonean town of Lunsar.

He is the second Spaniard to contract Ebola in the current outbreak. The Spanish health ministry said a specially equipped military aircraft was being sent to Freetown. The planned evacuation posed "practically nil" risk to public health in Spain, it added.

Red Cross alarmed

Commenting on Saturday's Freetown incident, the Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland, demanded that that attacks against health workers in western Africa must stop immediately.

"Attacks such as these – born of frustration and fear over the disease are not acceptable," the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) said in a statement.

"In communities where vital work has not been able to take place, cases of Ebla have risen, increasing the impact of the disease and amplifying its spread across the region," the statement said.

The Ebola virus has killed more than 2,600 people across West Africa since the outbreak began, according to the World Health Organization.

bw/shs,ipj (AP, Reuters)