Cult Fire Toll in Uganda May Reach 470

Two days after an apparent mass suicide in a remote part of southwestern Uganda, a police spokesman said Sunday that up to 470 cult members may have died in the fire.

“The scene is horror,” spokesman Asuman Mugenyi said after visiting the site of the fire. “It is only about two or three bodies which you can say that these are men or women. The rest of the bodies are beyond human shape.”

The fire Friday burned through a church in the small town of Kanungu, 217 miles southwest of Kampala, the Ugandan capital, according to deputy police spokesman Eric Naigambi. The doors and windows of the church had been nailed shut, he said.

Mugenyi said that it was impossible to identify bodies at the scene but that the number was likely to be double the 235 reported earlier.

Doctors began autopsies Sunday, and forensic experts were expected to arrive the same day from Kampala. Naigambi said it would take at least a week to know the exact number of people who died.

The cult, the Movement for the Restoration of Ten Commandments of God, was regarded as peaceful, Naigambi said.

Farmer Rutemba Didas said members of the cult did not socialize with others in the area and communicated only by gesture, although they did sing and pray aloud. The women wore white veils, and the men wore black, green or red shirts, he said.

It was unclear whether sect leader Joseph Kibweteere, who some reports said may have set the fire, had died in the blaze. He is said to have predicted the end of the world.

On Thursday, cult members visited nearby villages, bidding farewell to neighbors, witnesses told the Sunday Vision newspaper.

“They were aware they would die on March 17 because the Virgin Mary had promised to appear at the camp during the morning hours to carry them to heaven,” Anastasia Komuhanti said.