Kenyan investigators suspect the victims may have been starved and suffocated as a result of adopting extreme religious ideologies

At least five bodies have been recovered from shallow graves at a site in Kenya where victims of a religious cult are suspected to have been buried, officials in the East African country have said.

Investigators exhumed remains from six graves in Kwa Binzaro village, Kilifi County in southeastern Kenya, on Thursday, including the bodies of two children found in one grave. The site lies close to where hundreds of followers of a doomsday cult were discovered dead in 2023 in what has become known as the Shakahola cult massacre.

"We had 27 suspected graves at the commencement... We managed to exhume six... Also around that area, we found ten different body parts scattered in different places on the surface," Richard Njoroge, a government pathologist, told reporters.

Authorities have urged relatives of missing persons to provide DNA samples to help identify the victims.

Late last month, a court in Malindi authorized Kenya's Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to exhume bodies believed to be "concealed" in several shallow graves in the Kwa Binzaro area.

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Kenya's Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) said preliminary investigations in the latest case "suggest that the victims may have been starved and suffocated as a result of adopting and promoting extreme religious ideologies." According to the police unit, survivors rescued from the area were unable to account for the whereabouts of several children, "prompting suspicions of foul play."

At least 11 suspects are being investigated for alleged involvement in organized crime, radicalization, facilitation of terrorism, and murder, the ODPP said in a statement.

In 2023, more than 430 bodies were exhumed from dozens of mass graves in the nearby Shakahola forest. Autopsies revealed that most victims had died of starvation, while some, including children, were allegedly beaten or strangled. Paul Mackenzie, leader of the Good News International Church, has been charged in separate cases with terrorism, murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, and child torture and cruelty.