Uganda's Museveni condemns Doomsday cult deaths

Reuters, March 20, 2000

KAMPALA, March 20, 2000 (Reuters) - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has condemned the death of up to 500 members of a suspected Doomsday cult and promised a thorough investigation of the incident.

"He condemned in the strongest terms this horrific, senseless and tragic act and was deeply saddened to learn that the adults who carried out the barbarity had taken children with them and subjected them to such cruelty," Museveni's office said in a statement issued late on Sunday.

Officials said up to 500 people may have died in the fire, deliberately set inside their church on Friday morning.

More bodies were discovered on Monday inside a pit latrine and a vegetable garden around the church compound in the southwestern Ugandan village of Kanungu.

The leaders of the "Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God" had repeatedly told their followers that Doomsday would come in the Millennium Year and promised to deliver them to heaven.