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Health officials in Sierra Leone have discovered scores of bodies in a remote diamond-mining area, raising fears that the scale of the Ebola outbreak may have been underreported, the BBC reported.

The World Health Organization said they uncovered a "grim scene" in the eastern district of Kono.

A WHO response team had been sent to Kono to investigate a sharp rise in Ebola cases.

Ebola has killed 6,346 people in West Africa, with more than 17,800 infected.

Sierra Leone has the highest number of Ebola cases in West Africa, with 7,897 cases since the beginning of the outbreak.

The WHO said in a statement on Wednesday that over 11 days in Kono, "two teams buried 87 bodies, including a nurse, an ambulance driver, and a janitor drafted into removing bodies as they piled up."

Bodies of Ebola victims are highly infectious and safe burials are crucial in preventing the transmission of the disease.

The response team also found 25 people who had died in the past five days piled up in a cordoned section of the local hospital.

Dr Olu Olushayo, a member of the WHO's Ebola response team, said:

"Our team met heroic doctors and nurses at their wits' end, exhausted burial teams and lab techs, all doing the best they could but they simply ran out of resources and were overrun with gravely ill people."