The Kenyan Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki has announced that children account for most of the 109 bodies so far recovered in mass graves linked to a Christian church cult in the country.

This is the latest details in a case that has shocked Kenya and prompted calls for tighter regulation of religious groups feeding fat on their followers.

The minister who labeled those responsible for the deaths as terrorists, also announced the start of an air search over the Shakahola forest, where the bodies were discovered and are being exhumed.

He stated that autopsies on recovered bodies would begin on Monday.

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The leader of the Good News International Church, Paul Mackenzie, has been arrested and kept in police custody since April 14. He is also due to appear in court next week.

Kenyan media say he is accused of reportedly persuading his followers to starve themselves to death so that they would go to heaven. The accused pastor is yet to make a public comment.

Another focus of Pastor Mackenzie’s sermons has been the idea that formal education is satanic, needless and used to extort money.

In 2017 and again in 2018, he was arrested for encouraging children not to go to school as he claimed education was “not recognised in the Bible”, according to the BBC.

His church’s online content also features posts about the end of the world, impending doom and the unverifiable claims about dangers of science.