MONROVA, Liberia -- Liberian authorities say riot police were dispatched to a protest against the government's handling of the Ebola outbreak.

Angry demonstrators on Saturday blocked the country's busiest highway because authorities had not collected the bodies of some Ebola victims.

Residents said the bodies had been lying by the roadside for two days in Weala, a town 76 kilometres northeast of the capital, Monrovia.

Information Minister Lewis Brown sounded a warning on state radio telling the demonstrators "police are on their way to you."

The latest Ebola outbreak is the largest and longest ever recorded for the disease and so far has killed at least 961 people, the UN health agency said Friday. It emerged in Guinea in March and has since spread to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.