Ebola patients flee attack on Liberian isolation ward as Nigerian man in Alicante tested


  • A total of 29 patients fled the facility after gunmen stormed ward in capital
  • They smashed down the doors and looted medical supplies, a witness said 
  • Nigerian man at centre of Ebola scare in Spain tests negative for the virus

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Sam Webb for MailOnline

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Armed men attacked an Ebola isolation ward in the Liberian capital Monrovia overnight, prompting 29 patients to flee the facility, witnesses said Sunday.

‘They broke down the doors and looted the place. The patients all fled,’ said Rebecca Wesseh, who witnessed the attack and whose report was confirmed by residents and the head of Health Workers Association of Liberian, George Williams.

Meanwhile, Spanish ministry of health sources said a Nigerian man at the centre of an Ebola health scare on the Spanish Costas, which contains an estimated British population of more than 82,000, tested negative for the virus and has been given the all-clear.

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Armed men attacked an Ebola isolation ward in Liberia’s capital city of Monrovia, as seen from the roof of an abandoned hotel on Friday. A total of 29 patients fled the ward in terror.

A Liberian burial team load the body of a victim onto the back of a vehicle after removing him from his home

The outbreak has now claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people across four African countries

A Doctors Without Borders worker supervises work on a new Ebola treatment centre in Monrovia, Liberia. The facility will eventually have 350 beds, making it the largest such centre for Ebola isolation in history

He went down with vomiting, hemorrhaging and a high temperature – all symptoms of the disease – in Alicante, the capital of the Costa Blanca on the south-east coast, just a few days after arriving in Spain.

But the country’s state run national newsagency EFE quoted Ministry of Health sources as saying that tests carried out last night had all proved negative and that the unnamed man, who is in his 30s, was not a victim of the dreaded epidemic affecting several countries in West Africa.

He was placed in isolation at the San Juan hospital on Saturday evening and the results of the tests came through a little less than 24 hours later.

Hospital bosses activated the Ebola protocol after he complained of the flu-like symptoms associated with the onset of the virus and was seen by doctors.

Paramedics wearing protective suits and masks transferred him from Alicante General Hospital to nearby San Juan.

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