By Brian Okoth

The starvation cult death toll in Kenya has crossed the 300-mark after 19 more bodies were exhumed on Tuesday in Kenya’s coastal county of Kilifi.

The bodies were exhumed from Shakahola forest in Malindi Constituency, raising the death toll to 303 as of June 13, Coast Regional Commissioner, Rhoda Onyancha, said.

The victims died after allegedly obeying the orders of Pastor Paul Mackenzie, who asked them to fast to death in order to “meet Jesus Christ”.

Police said there were no new people rescued from the forest on Tuesday during the third phase of search and exhumation.

So far, 95 people have been rescued from Shakahola forest, with the number of those missing standing at more than 610 people.

Postmortem conducted on the exhumed victims indicated that most of them died of starvation, while others were strangled, suffocated or fatally hit.

The Kenyan government has vowed to lock up Mackenzie for allegedly engineering the “massacre” of hundreds of people.

Interior minister Kithure Kindiki said on June 6 that the Shakahola forest, where bodies of the victims were retrieved, will be converted into a national memorial “so that Kenyans and the world do not forget what happened here”.