Death count in African fields climbs above 640

RUGAZI, Uganda - The children and neighbors who had looked on in horrified wonder for two days drifted away Wednesday, accustomed by now to the gruesome sight of shirtless workers tugging twisted bodies through a narrow doorway onto the green lawn.

The death count linked to a Christian doomsday sect climbed even higher Wednesday - more than 640 - in what officials say is one of the largest mass murders in recent history.

The latest collection of twisted, decaying bodies was uncovered in the plain gray fieldstone house of Dominic Kataribabo, an excommunicated Roman Catholic priest and a sect leader.

By mid-afternoon, the workers' two-day task was complete: 81 mostly naked bodies of nameless people were pulled from the brown earth beneath the floor of a 10-by-10 foot room in Kataribabo's home, examined briefly and reburied. Earlier this week, 74 mutilated and strangled bodies, many of them children, were unearthed from a mass grave in a small sugarcane field in Kataribabo's backyard.

Kataribabo, 64, is believed to have been among the dead - a body thought to be his was found in the ruins, still wearing a clerical collar.

Authorities initially called the conflagration a mass suicide. But within days, investigators discovered six strangled, mutilated corpses in a pit latrine on the compound, triggering a murder investigation.

Authorities are pursuing the two main leaders of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, Cledonia Mwerinde and Joseph Kibwetere, an excommunicated Roman Catholic.

The pair had predicted that the world would end last Dec. 31. When that didn't happen, authorities believe, members demanded the return of possessions they had surrendered to join the sect, rebelled and were slaughtered.

- compiled by staff and wire reports