--- title: Priests Assaulted in Guinea After Being Mistaken for Ebola Workers description: They had gone to a local village to spray insecticides canonical: https://time.com/3675775/ebola-guinea-priests-beaten-village/ author: Rishi Iyengar article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-21T03:23:42.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T03:44:06.268Z article:section: Health og:title: Guinean Priests Assaulted og:description: Local villagers mistook them for Ebola awareness workers. og:url: https://time.com/3675775/ebola-guinea-priests-beaten-village/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Guinean Priests Assaulted twitter:description: Local villagers mistook them for Ebola awareness workers. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Priests Assaulted in Guinea After Being Mistaken for Ebola Workers by [Rishi Iyengar](https://time.com/author/rishi-iyengar/) ## Rishi Iyengar Jan 21, 2015 3:23 AM UTC by [Rishi Iyengar](https://time.com/author/rishi-iyengar/) ## Rishi Iyengar Jan 21, 2015 3:23 AM UTC Three priests from a church in Guinea were [physically assaulted](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30900917) while visiting the village of Kabac on Tuesday, as locals suspected they were health workers who would expose inhabitants to the Ebola virus. The villagers beat up the priests, who had planned to spray insecticide around the area, the BBC reported. They also vandalized the nearby town council building, setting fire to it after burning the priests’ car. Guinea, one of the three West African countries worst affected by the Ebola outbreak, has lost nearly 2,000 people to the disease. The nation’s schools reopened earlier this week following a five-month break, soon after the U.N. said the number of cases nationwide had fallen to its lowest weekly total since August. \[[_BBC_](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30900917)\] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3675775/ebola-guinea-priests-beaten-village/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3675775/ebola-guinea-priests-beaten-village/"},"headline":"Priests Assaulted in Guinea After Being Mistaken for Ebola Workers","datePublished":"2015-01-21T03:23:42.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T03:44:06.268Z","description":"They had gone to a local village to spray insecticides","url":"https://time.com/3675775/ebola-guinea-priests-beaten-village/","keywords":["ebola","Guinea","infectious diseases"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Rishi Iyengar","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/rishi-iyengar/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/ebola/","name":"ebola"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3675775/ebola-guinea-priests-beaten-village/","name":"Priests Assaulted in Guinea After Being Mistaken for Ebola Workers"}}]}] ```