Sierra Leone denied on Sunday media reports that said that it is willing to receive Lebanon's garbage as part of a recently approved deal to tackle the country's waste management problem, reported al-Jadeed television.

Sierra Leone's consul in Lebanon Donald Roy Josepeh Abed deemed the reports as “baseless.”

Thousands of people were going into a second week in makeshift camps after being made homeless by severe flooding as Sierra Leone was buffeted by torrential rain, the authorities said Wednesday.

Floodwater destroyed houses and swept away property and vehicles as the capital Freetown, an overcrowded coastal city of 1.2 million mainly poor inhabitants, was pounded by torrential rain on Wednesday last week. 

At least seven people have died with hundreds made homeless as swathes of Sierra Leone's capital were submerged by massive flooding after hours of torrential rain, emergency management officials said Thursday.

Residents described how waters destroyed their homes, swept away household goods and damaged vehicles as Freetown, an overcrowded city of 1.2 million, was pounded overnight. 

Sierra Leone's head of Ebola says the country has only four cases of Ebola and he is hopeful the countdown to zero can soon begin.

National Emergency Response Center chief Alfred Palo Conteh said Thursday that two of those cases have proven negative after treatments, and the other two in the northern Tonkolili district are in treatment. Sierra Leone quarantined 500 people in the district after a man died from Ebola the other week. The area had not seen the deadly virus for months.

Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma has unveiled a post-Ebola "battle plan" to help the west African country turn the page on the devastating epidemic.

"Beyond the immediate nine-month recovery period, we will commence a two-year plan during which we must resolve to restore Sierra Leone to the path to prosperity," Koroma said in a statement released Friday.

One of the three districts of Sierra Leone where new cases of Ebola have been recorded will jail those who break a new emergency by-law designed to prevent the spread of the disease, an official said Sunday.

The District Ebola Response Center Coordinator, Raymond Kabia said "a high-level stakeholders meeting" on Friday decided that "violators of the by-laws would no longer be fined but will go to jail for six months instead".

The Gambian government has withdrawn its expulsion of a powerful business magnate accused by the United States of funding Hizbullah party.

Lebanese-Gambian multi-millionaire Hussein Tajudeen, a former close friend of President Yahya Jammeh, had been ordered to leave the country earlier this month for "unacceptable business practices that are detrimental to the Gambian economy," according to the presidency.

Sierra Leone leader Ernest Bai Koroma has appointed and sworn in a new vice president, the presidency said Thursday, a day after the sacked deputy vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.

In a statement it said Victor Bockarie Foh, a veteran powerbroker in the ruling party and most recently ambassador to China, had been named "due to the vacancy of the post".

Sierra Leone is planning another three-day, countrywide shutdown later this month to ferret out Ebola cases, remind people how to protect themselves from the disease and control its transmission.

The West Africa Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 10,000 people is declining but the disease has remained stubbornly entrenched in parts of Guinea and Sierra Leone. Liberia, the third country severely affected, currently has no Ebola cases.

Sierra Leone leader Ernest Bai Koroma has sacked his vice-president, he announced, in a bid to turn the page on a political crisis that raised fears over the country's stability.

Samuel Sam-Sumana's dismissal comes almost two weeks after he was expelled from the governing All People's Congress (APC) and went into hiding, claiming he was in danger and asking the United States to grant him asylum.