Kenya cult death toll hits 200, with more than 600 reported missing

NAIROBI, Kenya — The death toll connected to a doomsday cult in Kenya hit 201 Saturday after police exhumed 22 more our bodies, maximum of them bearing indicators of hunger, in step with the coast regional commissioner.

The our bodies are believed to be the ones of fans of a pastor based totally in coastal Kenya, Paul Mackenzie. He’s imagined to have ordered congregants to starve to death to be able to meet Jesus.

More than 600 individuals are nonetheless missing.

Mackenzie, who was once arrested final month, stays in custody. Police plan to fee him with terrorism-related offenses.

Hundreds of our bodies had been dug up from dozens of mass graves unfold throughout his 800-acre assets, positioned within the coastal county of Kilifi.

Mackenzie insists that he closed his church in 2019 and moved to his assets in a forested house to farm.

Autopsies performed on more than 100 our bodies final week confirmed the sufferers died of hunger, strangulation, suffocation and accidents sustained from blunt items.

Local media retailers had been reporting circumstances of missing interior frame organs, quoting investigators within the case.

Mackenzie, his spouse and 16 different suspects will seem in courtroom on the finish of the month.

Coast regional commissioner Rhoda Onyancha on Saturday mentioned the overall choice of the ones arrested stood at 26, with 610 folks reported as missing through their households.

It is unclear what number of survivors had been rescued thus far from the quest and rescue operations on Mackenzie’s huge assets. Some of them have been too vulnerable to stroll once they have been discovered.

Cults are not unusual in Kenya, which has a spiritual society.

Police around the nation had been wondering different spiritual leaders whose teachings are believed to be deceptive and opposite to fundamental human rights.

President William Ruto final week shaped a fee of inquiry to analyze how loads of folks have been lured to their deaths on the coast and suggest motion on establishments that did not act.

Mackenzie had prior to now been charged with the deaths of youngsters in his church in a case this is ongoing in courtroom. Residents within sight had raised the alarm after his fans moved to the forested house.