MALINDI: Kenyan investigators unearthed another 16 bodies on Tuesday in a forest where a cult was believed to be practising mass starvation, bringing the number of victims so far to 90 including children.
There are fears more corpses could be found in Shakahola forest where cult leader Paul Mackenzie Nthenge had allegedly been telling his followers that starvation was the only path to God.
Children are among the latest victims of the “Shakahola Forest Massacre”, with search teams in white overalls still undertaking the macabre task inland from Malindi on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast.
The grim discovery has shocked the nation and President William Ruto has pledged a crackdown on “unacceptable” religious movements as horrifying details unfold by the day. Visiting the site on Tuesday, Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki warned that worse could still come.
“We don’t know how many more graves, how many more bodies, we are likely to discover,” he told reporters, adding the crimes were serious enough to warrant terrorism charges against Nthenge.
He said 34 people had been found alive so far in the vast forest, where police were tipped off about the cult’s activities and a crime scene has been established. “The majority of the bodies exhumed are children,” a forensic investigator said on condition of anonymity.
As the fatalities mounted, authorities at the state-run Malindi Sub-County Hospital warned that the morgue was running out of space to store the bodies and already operating well over capacity.
