NAIROBI, Aug 1 (NNN-KBC) — Pathologists conducted autopsies on 24 bodies Monday, bringing the total number of postmortems conducted on bodies of victims of the Shakahola self-starvation cult massacre to 381 since the exercise began.
Chief Government Pathologist Johansen Oduor told reporters at the Malindi Sub County Hospital Funeral Home Monday that 23 of the bodies were of children while one belonged to an adult.
Dr Oduor attributed the high number of children’s bodies that had undergone postmortem examinations to the fact that there was a high number of children’s bodies exhumed in the phone phase exhumations in the Shakahola forest.
“In the last phase of exhumations, there were more bodies of children than adults, so that is why we are finding in the postmortems more children than adults,” he said.
Ten of the bodies were of the male gender while eight were female, Dr Oduor said while giving a daily update on the autopsies.
He said that the investigations had revealed that six of the victims had died of starvation while the team could not establish the cause of death of 18 of the victims due to the high level of decomposition.
The exercise is set to continue on Tuesday in an effort to conduct autopsies of the remaining 44 bodies after which the pathologists could head back to the Shakahola forest where more graves a believed to have been identified. — NNN-KBC