Second Uganda Mass Death

The bodies of 153 sect members were found Friday, strangled and hacked to death in a mass grave in western Uganda near a church where hundreds perished in a fire, police said.

The bodies, which included 59 children, were discovered as police continue to investigate the deaths of at least 330 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments, who were burned alive in a sect compound 20 miles away in remote southwestern Uganda.

Police said they were now treating all the deaths as mass murder.

"It was definitely murder," said police spokesman Assuman Mugenyi on Friday.

The March 17 fire was set at a makeshift church belonging to the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. The estimated death toll in the blaze has ranged from 150 to 600, and the cause has been attributed to gasoline, a bomb or both. There have been conflicting reports about the willingness of some sect members to commit suicide.

Various reports put sect membership anywhere between 1,000 and 5,000 in nine districts in Uganda, a country of 21 million. It was a legally registered as a non-governmental organization.

President Yoweri Museveni told reporters Thursday there had been two investigations into the movement since 1994. While the first investigation found nothing worrisome, the second, by internal security officers, said the group was a security threat. However, he said that report was passed to an official reportedly a group member who may have covered it up. He did not say when the second inquiry took place.

Uganda's ill-funded and under-trained police force has been overwhelmed by the investigation, and many questions remain about what happened in Kanungu.