Burial workers in Sierra Leone have dumped dead bodies in the street outside a hospital to protest authorities' failure to pay bonuses for handling Ebola victims, in the latest strike to hamper the fight against the worst known outbreak of the virus.

A spokesman for the striking workers in the eastern town of Kenema, who asked not to be identified, said they had not been paid their weekly hazard allowance for seven weeks.

Authorities accepted that the money had not been paid but said that all the striking members of the Ebola Burial Team would be dismissed.