Thirty more autopsies were Tuesday conducted on bodies recovered from Shakahola forest, Kilifi County.
Pathologists said they also did 27 DNAs for families looking for their relatives who joined the controversial pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie’s cult.
This brings the total number of postmortems to 40 since the exercise being conducted by the pathologists started on Monday.
Government Chief Pathologist Johansen Oduor said the process went fast because they started early as opposed to the first day when they had some hitches.
Oduor said of the 30 postmortem eight were male while 22 were female adding that there were 15 adults and 9 children.
He said there were six adults who were lying between male and female but could not be recognized because of the level of decomposition and skeletonization.
He said most of the bodies were badly decomposed with an exception of a few which were moderately decomposed.
On the cause of death, Oduor said they established that most of them died because of starvation.
“Twenty of the autopsies we did had features of starvation, there were six in which we were unable to ascertain the cause of death because of the level of decompositions so it was very difficult for us to ascertain what caused their deaths because they were very badly decomposed,” he said.
He said one of them a child had a trauma of the head while three of them had asphyxiation a sign that they were denied oxygen
Out of the three, he said they could see clearly that one had marks on the neck of someone who had been strangled with breaking of some muscles, and some bones in the neck.
“So, we are very certain that this person who was a child also was actually strangled,” he said.
Oduor said two others had undergone smothering, which is a process whereby someone blocks a person’s nose and mouth so that he or she is unable to breathe until death.
Oduor said the one who was strangled was a female aged around 11 years while the two who were smothered were adults, a male and a female.
He said there were relatives who came to be taken DNA and they managed to take 27 DNAs so as to reconcile with the DNA they take from the deceased and help in identifying their relatives who died.
He said since they managed to do 30 postmortems, they expect to do the same number on Wednesday and complete the postmortem by Thursday.
The exhumation exercise is set to resume on Friday.
