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Kenya’s Inspector General of Police, Japhet Koome, second right, tours the scene where dozens of bodies have been found in shallow graves in the village of Shakahola, near the coastal city of Malindi, in southern Kenya on April 24, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP
Kenyan officials say the number of deaths linked to a cult on the country’s Indian Ocean coast has risen to 110.
Heavy rains stalled the exhumation process for the third day as government pathologists began autopsies. The official number of victims had been at 103 until Monday and could rise as the investigation continues.
According to the Kenyan Interior Ministry, five people have been found alive over the last two days by searches and aerial surveillance of the 50,000-acre Chakama ranch.
Also read: Good News International Church | Horrors of a Kenyan cult
The autopsies began a day after President William Ruto announced that his government would soon establish a judicial commission of inquiry to investigate the deaths.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga said Monday that the Kenyan parliament should “establish whether the deaths … were acts of rogue pastors, human sacrifices or body-organ trade.”
Leaders from the region and human-rights organizations have criticized the government’s slow pace of rescues, and its denying journalists and activists access to the forest.
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