While deploring the mass starvation of members of Good News International Ministries in Malindi, officials of established churches are resisting calls for more regulation of religious groups.
According to government autopsies, starvation appears to have been the main cause of death, although some victims, including children, were strangled, beaten or suffocated
The death toll in the Kenyan cult investigation has surpassed 400 following the discovery of 12 additional bodies, majority of whom were victims of starvation. The search continues in the Shakahola forest where Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, the cult leader, encouraged his followers to starve themselves to death. Mackenzie has been detained in police custody since mid-April and his detention was extended by a month on July 3 as prosecutors consider terrorism or genocide charges.