Labourers yesterday unearthed 80 more bodies, mostly women and children, at a fourth compound linked to a Christian doomsday sect. The discoveries raise the death toll from a church fire and mass killings to more than 724.

In their latest search for victims of the secretive religious sect, police were concentrating on a hilltop village in southwestern Uganda where a neighbour said people would regularly "vanish."

Ugandan authorities said yesterday they had arrested a local government official for suspected links with the Christian Doomsday cult.

Internal Affairs Minister Edward Rugumayo said police had arrested Reverend Amooti Mutazindwa, an assistant district commissioner in southwest Uganda, for allegedly suppressing an intelligence report that suggested the cult posed a security threat.

(China Daily 2000/03/31)