In Uganda, police have uncovered 74 more bodies in a mass grave bringing to 700 the number of followers of the Doomsday Cult who have been killed in recent months. Today police will visit three more sites where they suspect more bodies may be buried. They say the final death toll could be much higher.
Police said there appeared to be many more bodies buried in the ground behind the house of prominent cult leader "Father" Dominic Kataribabo. If confirmed, this would bring to nearly 700 the number of known victims of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, whose leaders apparently began to kill members after a prophecy that the world would end on December 31, 1999 failed to come true.
Last week, police found 153 bodies under a building used by the movement in the nearby village of Buhunga, many of whom had apparently been clubbed, strangled or hacked to death in recent weeks. Some 500 members of the sect died in Kanungu when their church burned down earlier this month. Police initially treated the fire as a mass suicide, but now say it looks more like the culmination of a systematic policy of killing cult members.
