Mali Frees U.N. Peacekeepers from Ebola Quarantine

A group of United Nations peacekeepers trapped in a clinic in Mali when it was quarantined after an outbreak of Ebola have been allowed to leave, the UN said Saturday.

Around 20 soldiers from the mission, known as MINUSMA, had been admitted to the Pasteur Clinic in the capital Bamako with various injuries connected to their service in restive northern Mali.

They were locked into the clinic with other patients and staff three weeks ago when a nurse was found to have died after contracting Ebola from a Muslim cleric who had travelled from Guinea to seek treatment.

"Having all been placed under observation, the quarantined MINUSMA soldiers showed no symptoms of the disease so they just left the establishment," the mission's spokesman Olivier Salgado said in a statement.

No other person quarantined at the clinic is reported to be showing symptoms.

Seven people have died in the west African nation, with the first fatality a two-year-old girl brought from neighboring Guinea to stay with relatives.

Three days after the girl died, an Islamic cleric, also from Guinea, perished in the capital Bamako, transmitting the virus, directly or indirectly, to at least five people, all of whom have now also died.

Mali's health ministry said on Wednesday that two new cases had surfaced -- the 23-year-old fiancee of the nurse who attended to the imam and a 27-year-old man who had lost his mother and half-brother to Ebola.

The World Health Organization said in its latest update that as of December 2, 219 of 227 current contacts linked with the outbreak in Bamako were under observation.

Ebola has killed more than 6,000 people and infected around 17,000, almost all in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.