Eight health officials and journalists were found dead in Guinea after a mob, fearing the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, threw rocks at them, according to a government spokesman on Thursday.

The delegation came to the remote village of Nzerekore to educate residents about the Ebola outbreak, spokesman Albert Camara Damantang said. Some of the officials managed to escape alive and ask for help from their colleagues in Conakry, The New York Times reported.

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The group included a regional health director, a sub-prefect, a pastor and several journalists. The sub-prefect's five-year-old son was among those who escaped the attack and was found hiding in the bush, Damantang said.

The search party found the dead bodies two days after the delegation was reported missing, according to The Huffington Post.

They are not only wrestling with limited resources, backward health systems and lack of knowledge in combating the disease; they also have to deal with the lack of trust among the locals, the report explained.

In Guinea, local people blame health workers and officials for the Ebola spread and have been threatening to attack them with knives, stones and other crude weapons.

Meanwhile, some Liberian politicians publicly accused the government of portraying an exaggerated extent of the Ebola outbreak just to glean monetary donations from the international community.

Before, health workers, officials and journalists in West Africa die in their efforts to fight the deadly virus. But now, they face a new danger in the form of panicked locals who think they are helping spread rather than cure the disease.

In August, people in the same city in Guinea rioted after hearing rumors that the health workers were deliberately infecting the residents with Ebola.

As the outbreak's death toll in West Africa reached 2,600, the governments of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia have frantically struggled to contain its spread. However, the efforts to slow down the epidemic appear to be ineffective.

The Ebola outbreak has now reached Senegal and the United Nations said it needs US$1 billion to help stop its spread, the report stated.

TagsWest Africa, Guinea mob, dead health workers, epidemic