Cult Killings Exceed Jonestown Toll

The death toll in the doomsday sect massacre in southwestern Uganda was raised Friday to 924, surpassing the 1978 Jonestown tragedy in Guyana as the worst modern-day cult-related mass killing.

Police announced that another suspected mass grave linked to the cult had been found but said they would halt any digging until they have reinforced their investigative team. They appealed for international help.

The latest suspected grave was found in a cult member’s house at Kanungu in southwest Uganda, near the church where more than 500 people were burned to death March 17.

Ugandan authorities have promised to apprehend the perpetrators of the mass killings. But investigators showed no signs of being able to track down sect leaders or even of being able to confirm if any are still alive.

Police revised the death toll in the church fire that set off the search for more victims among cult followers.

Authorities initially reported at least 330 charred bodies were found inside the ruins of a makeshift church in the sect’s main compound. They later raised the toll to 530 in what was believed to have been a gasoline-fueled inferno in the sealed church.

Subsequent searches of three sect compounds in villages unearthed mass graves yielding victims apparently killed after what had been the cult’s Dec. 31 deadline for the world to end.

Some victims appeared to have been knifed or strangled; hundreds were children.

The government plans a day of prayer Sunday to “console surviving relatives and assure the country that action is being taken in pursuit of the criminal perpetrators,” presidential chief of staff Ruhakana Rugunda said. An interdenominational prayer service will be held in Kanungu.

Forensic investigators in Kanungu gathered Friday at a cemetery overlooking the main compound of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God to determine if any graves there might contain more than one body. Finding nothing suspicious, they delayed any digging.

Police then retreated to Kampala, the capital, to await pathology reports on some of the bodies already discovered, police pathologist Thaddeus Barungi said.

The toll surpasses the November 1978 Peoples Temple tragedy at Jonestown in the jungles of Guyana. The Jonestown mass suicide and killings claimed 913 lives, including that of U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan, journalists and a few defectors shot to death as they tried to board a flight out.

Ugandan police are pursuing international arrest warrants for Joseph Kibwetere, Keredonia Mwerinde and three other suspected cult leaders. It’s not clear if any or all of them escaped the killing sites.

The leaders drew largely on disaffected Roman Catholics in Uganda, leading many to give up their land to take up a strict doctrine of fasting, silence and prayer. At least one leader was an excommunicated Catholic priest.