RUGAZI, Uganda: About 70 corpses were discovered on Monday in the garden of Father Dominic Kataribabo, a leader of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, some 700 of whose members have now been found dead.

Hundreds of curious bystanders, most of which were children, watched as shoeless prisoners pulled body after body from the narrow, 2.5 metre-deep grave in Rugazi, the third to be uncovered in the last four days in southern Uganda.

Another 153 bodies were found in two graves at another site belonging to the cult in the nearby village of Buhunga on Friday. Some 500 more were found burned to death in their church in Kanungu earlier this month.

Police initially treated the Kanungu blaze as mass suicide. Now they are treating it as mass murder.

Cult leaders, they suspect, may have been systematically killing followers for months after a prediction that the world would end at the end of the millennium failed to come true.

Almost all the bodies were naked and none were recognizable. Skin had lost its pigment and the piled up corpses shone an unnatural, almost translucent white under the searing sun.

The bodies of 26 children were pulled out of the grave. Most had ropes tied around their necks, and police said they appeared to have been garroted.

Investigators yesterday found another mass grave linked to the doomsday religious sect, which contained seven bodies, including those of at least three children.

Agencies via Xinhua
China Daily 2000/03/29