Police discover 163 more cult deaths in Uganda

Ugandan police have found the corpses of 163 people buried in a church compound used by the same doomsday cult whose members died in a fire last week.

The bodies were found in Buhunga, about 40 miles from the church at Kanungu where over 500 cult members died when their church was set ablaze a week ago.

"They must have died in a matter of the last few weeks." said local MP, Jim Muhwezi "It would appear wherever they had a church they had a killing.".

Muhwezi said local police had told him they had found 20 corpses in one grave and the rest in a second bigger grave, but that police were still digging.

The discovery reinforces suspicions that the victims of the Kanungu blaze, who were initially thought to have committed suicide en masse, were in fact murdered by their leaders.

Officials have said the cult - whose members thought the world would end at the beginning of the new millennium - used five sites in southwest Uganda. There has been no word of excavations at any of the other sites so far.