Sect 'of fasting' in Kenya, the dead are now over 400

The victims of the so-called "fasting cult" in Kenya have passed the 400 mark, after police today exhumed another twelve bodies of followers from mass graves in Shakaola forest, in the country's coastal hinterland. This was announced by the regional police commander, Rhoda Onyancha, declaring on the Citizen Digital website that a total of 403 people were killed and 95 people found still alive in the land where the preacher Paul Mackenzie had gathered his faithful, inviting them to prayer and to abstinence from food in order "to be able to meet Jesus in heaven". Mackenzie has been in prison since last April along with 36 other people, on charges of instigating suicide, but direct responsibility for some deaths is also being investigated, given that the results of some autopsies on the bodies revealed signs of suffocation and strangulation. The exhumation operations will continue tomorrow, Onyancha said.