Hundreds feared dead in Ugandan murder-suicide

Church windows, doors were nailed shut

March 19, 2000
Web posted at: 10:24 p.m. EST (0324 GMT)

In this story: Death toll hard to pin down Members partied, said farewell Leader's fate unknown Sect members must register with government RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

KANUNGU, Uganda -- At least 150 people are dead following Saturday's apparent mass suicide and murder by doomsday cult members in southwestern Uganda, police and other sources said Sunday.

Government authorities said they expected the toll to rise as more bodies were counted from a fire in a prayer house where the victims perished.

VIDEO Nairobi Bureau Chief Catherine Bond reports on the history of the sect involved in the apparent mass suicide and murder of at least 150 people. Windows Media 28K 80K     MESSAGE BOARD Doomsday sect deaths     AUDIO CNN's Catherine Bond reports from Uganda Sunday about the apparent mass murder-suicide 401K/32 sec. AIFF or WAV sound 694K/63 sec. AIFF or WAV sound     ALSO

"The scene is horror," police spokesman Asuman Mugenyi told The Associated Press after visiting the site. "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 AP reported that Mugenyi said the death toll could ultimately surpass 400.

Mugenyi said police were treating the incident as both suicide and murder because children were involved.

"Definitely it is both, because there were a big number of children who were led there by their parents," he said.

Deputy police spokesman Eric Naigambi said it would take at least a week to determine an exact death count.

"We don't know who was inside or outside," he said. "Relatives of people said to have burned keep on telling us that their relatives are nowhere to be seen, and yet we have not proved their identities."

Naigambi added that the doors and windows of the church had been nailed shut.

Stephen Lkwalinga, a regional commander for Ugandan police, told CNN that the confirmed death toll Sunday stood at about 150.

Doctors started conducting autopsies on Sunday and forensic experts traveled to the scene from the Ugandan capital, Kampala, about 347 kilometers (217 miles) northeast.

The sect was called the "Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God." Its leader, Joseph Kibweteere, preached that the world would end in 2000. To prepare for the end, the followers sold off their possessions, dressed up in white, green and black robes, and boarded themselves in their church.

Local residents told one paper the sect members had a party on Wednesday at which they consumed 70 crates of soda and three bulls. The next day, they gathered personal belongings including clothing, money, suitcases and church materials and burned them, the paper reported.

On Thursday, cult members went around 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 told the paper.

The sect members gathered at the church on Friday morning and, after singing and chanting for several hours, set the building on fire, said police.

"People said they heard some screaming but it was all over very quickly," said Mugenyi.

Witnesses told the Monitor they smelled gasoline and heard an explosion that set the church on fire.

A local villager named Florence said sect members believed the church was the place they could go in time of calamity.

"They were told that at a certain time this year the world would end and so the leaders made it happen and perhaps the people there believed it had happened," she said.

It was unclear whether Kibweteere died in the fire.

Kibweteere originally had predicted the world would end December 31, 1999, but later changed the date to December 31, 2000, according to the Monitor.

The paper quoted Kanungu residents as saying Kibweteere started preaching in 1994 and was a former member of the Roman Catholic Church.

If the fire is determined to have been a mass suicide, it would be the second-largest in recent history. In 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana, 914 followers of the Rev. Jim Jones died by poisoning.

Violent religious sects have caused trouble in Uganda in the past, prompting authorities last year to require sect members to register with the government.

Mugenyi said all 235 registered members of the sect had probably perished in the fire, as well as some unregistered new arrivals.

"I think it (the fire) calls on the state to review the issue of cults and see what measures to take to protect the ordinary people from cult leaders," Amama Mbabazi, minister of state for foreign affairs, told the government-owned Sunday Vision newspaper.

In September, police in central Uganda disbanded another doomsday cult, the 1,000-member "World Message Last Warning" sect. The leaders were charged with rape, kidnapping and illegal confinement.

An extreme and violent Christian cult, the Holy Spirit Movement, sprang up in poor areas of northern Uganda in the late 1980s. Several hundred followers of that group died in suicidal attacks against government troops, convinced that magic oil would protect them.

Its successor, the Lord's Resistance Army, is still pursuing a guerrilla war. It claims it wants to rule the country on the basis of the Biblical Ten Commandments, yet it has kidnapped thousands of boys and girls to serve as soldiers and sex slaves, and frequently commits atrocities against local people.

In recent years there have been several smaller group suicides in Europe and North America, three involving the Solar Temple, an international sect that believes death by ritual suicide leads to rebirth.

Nairobi Bureau Chief Catherine Bond, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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