Mutilated bodies have been uncovered in two mass graves at a compound belonging to the Ugandan sect whose headquarters were destroyed in a fire last week.
The 153 bodies in the mass grave, including 59 children, appeared to have been strangled or suffocated. They were discovered at Kalingo village, in west Uganda, 30 miles from the sect's headquarters in Kanungu, where at least 336 people - and perhaps as many as 500 - died in a fire at a church last Friday. The police, who initially treated the Kanungu deaths as mass suicide, are now treating them as mass murder.
The discovery of the mass graves, means that 489 people are known to have died at the hands of the Movement for the Restoration of the 10 Commandments of God. The true toll is likely to be much higher, as it was impossible to accurately count the charred and twisted remains of those who died in the Kanungu fire.
The sect's death toll makes it second only to the Jonestown cult's mass suicide of 1978, when 914 people died in South America.
The graves at Kalingo were found under the earthen floor of an abandoned and burned house by police who were moving around the region to shut branches of the sect after last week's fire.
The bodies "had been there about one or 1 months", said a police spokesman, Asuman Mugenyi. "Some had been suffocated using their clothes, and others had been cut with sharp objects. There were 94 adults and 59 children."
He said the bodies were discovered after police noticed a depression in the ground that did not match other areas in the house. "That prompted them to dig."
Mr Mugenyi said the sect had not raised the suspicion of local people because the building was set in 12 acres of land away from villagers. He said sect members had reportedly left the house on the night of March 12. On March 18, the day after the fire at Kanungu, someone returned and set the abandoned building alight.
The discovery of the graves will add weight to a preliminary police report into the Kanungu fire, released yesterday, which concluded that the sect's followers died as a result of mass murder,not suicide.
"We are now treating the deaths in Kanungu as mass murder, apart from the leaders, who, if they perished, committed suicide because they knew what was going to happen," a police official, Eric Naigambi, said.
He added that while the sect's followers appeared to have believed that the Virgin Mary was coming to take them to heaven, they may not have known what would happen to them when they entered the church.
Six bodies were also found dumped in a pit latrine in a compound at the church headquarters. They had been mutilated and doused in battery acid.
Police have yet to establish whether the sect's leaders were among the dead. Only one, Dominic Kataribaabo, is known to have died in the fire.
Mr Naigambi said that security officials had not suspected the sect's followers of planning anything untowards because the group had invited the district commissioner to a party on March 18 to inaugurate its new church.
"These cult members, although planning for prayers to elevate them to heaven on the 17th, duped the public into thinking they had another day on earth by saying they were having a party on the 18th to welcome the new resident district commissioner," he said.
The sect was led by Joseph Kibwetere, a former Roman Catholic teacher. His principal aides claimed to have regular visions from the Virgin Mary and Jesus and in the last year had begun to predict the imminent end of the world. Only members of the sect would be saved, they said.
Government officials, still reeling from the mass deaths of last Friday, have been stunned by the latest discovery. "Its incomprehensible. It's mind-boggling. It's incredible," the internal affairs minister, Edward Rugamayo, said.