KAMPALA, March 20 (Reuters) - Joseph Kibwetere, a failed Ugandan politician, led his disciples to a grisly mass death apparently because he believed the world was about to be destroyed for not obeying the Ten Commandments.
The 68-year old self-styled bishop of the ``Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God'' had been a prominent member of the Roman Catholic-based Democratic Party in the 1960s and 70s.
But his political career ended abruptly when the rival Ugandan People's Congress led by Milton Obote won a controversial general election in 1980. Kibwetere, a wealthy dairy and poultry farmer and a devout Catholic, was hounded out of his home district of Ntungamo in southwestern Uganda, taking refuge with an Anglican bishop in the nearby town of Kabale.
Seven years later, at a time when many people reported seeing visions in the Kabale area, Kibwetere claimed to have overheard a conversation between Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary -- and recorded it on tape.
It was to be the basis for Friday's mass death when, according to first reports, hundreds of Kibwetere's followers boarded themselves in their church in the remote town of Kanungu in southwestern Uganda, sang and chanted for several hours, then set the building on fire.
``There is a lady's voice on the tape which says the world is suffering because the people are not following the Ten Commandments,'' said Sister Stella Maris, a Catholic nun living near Kanungu. ``She says the commandments must be enforced or the world will end.'' However, as searchers found more bodies around the church on Monday, speculation increased that many of the dead were murdered rather than willing participants in a mass suicide.
``MORE CATHOLIC THAN THE POPE''
Kibwetere, joined by two former Catholic priests and a nun who had fallen out of favour with their church, formed the cult in the late 1980s and moved to an isolated town in the lush green hills of southwest Uganda.
Marcellino Bwesigye, whose late father was a contemporary of Kibwetere, hosted the cult leaders at his Kampala home for several nights late last year.
``Kibwetere was a hard working, enterprising man but a terrible conservative in his religious beliefs,'' Bwesigye told Reuters. ``He was a Catholic who wanted to be more Catholic than the Pope.'' His austere beliefs were reflected in his movement.
Dressed in green, white or black robes, his followers were told to live strictly by the commandments and communicate with each other only in gestures unless they were praying or singing. They had little contact with local residents in Kanungu except to sell their homemade crafts.
Cult members were required to sell their possessions and give the proceeds to the church.
``They gave all their money to the leaders who they say filled sacks with dry banana fibres in imitation of currency notes and burned them,'' Paul Kwesigabo, a local government official told Reuters.
It is not clear where the money ended up or whether Kibwetere himself died in last Friday's blaze.
Kibwetere had at first predicted the world would end on December 31 last year. When he was proved wrong, he and his associates apparently came under increasing pressure from a now destitute congregation to repay their money. ``That's when they hatched this new date of March 17,'' district adminstrator Kalule Ssengo told Reuters.
Cult members, on buses, pick-ups and lorries, started making their way to the cult's compound several days before March 17. It was only those in the church who would be saved, they were told, while the rest of the world would face God's wrath.
Uganda's state-owned New Vision newspaper quoted Kibwetere's son, Maurice Rugambwa, as saying his father surely went to his death with his followers. It also said Kibwetere sent a letter last Thursday -- his first in three years -- and several books to his wife, Theresa, so that she should go on ``with what we have been doing because we are going to perish.''

KAMPALA, Uganda (March 20) - The death toll from a church fire in Uganda believed to be a mass suicide of parishioners had reached at least 500, officials said today as they prepared for a mass burial of the charred and disfigured bodies.
Four days after the fire at the church compound belonging to the Christian sect Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, police said they had counted 500 bodies.
''It may be a total of 600,'' said police spokesman Asumani Mugenyi, adding that burial in a mass grave would begin today.
Earlier reports had put the number of victims at between 235 and 470.
Police said all five leaders of the sect, four of them former Roman Catholic priests or lay workers, had died in the Friday morning blaze just outside Kanungu trading center, 220 miles southwest of Kampala.
Mugenyi identified the leaders as Cledonia Mwerinde, 40, a former prostitute who built the group's compound on the farm of her late father; Joseph Kibweteere, 68, a former Roman Catholic priest in Kabale diocese north of Kanungu; and Dominic Kataribabo, 32, Joseph Kasapurari, 39, and John Kamagara, 69 - all reported to be former priests.
Mugenyi said the identification of the alleged leaders was not based on forensic evidence but on ''comments from local people'' who told police the five had been inside the building - said to have been sealed from the inside before the fire began.
Syncretic Christian religious sects are mushrooming across Africa as many people become disillusioned with the inability of politicians to improve their lives.
The Kanungu sect has branches in several other parts of Uganda, and its members used only gestures to communicate, reportedly for fear of breaking commandments. But they do sing and pray aloud.
In the wake of the disaster, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni today warned the nation's religious leaders against those who might endanger the lives of the unsuspecting.
The government ''believes in the freedom of worship. It also has a duty to protect the lives of the people of Uganda ... and to ensure that Ugandans are not at the mercy of some dangerous and opportunistic individuals who parade themselves as religious leaders,'' a statement from Museveni's office said.
Following the deadly blaze, rural people who lived near the compound told police and reporters that members had told them about a sighting of the Virgin Mary and that something big was going to happen. Kibweteere had reportedly predicted the end of the world on Dec. 31. When that didn't happen, he moved the date up to Dec. 31, 2000.
Last week, sect members feasted on roast bull and soda after selling their possessions and telling friends goodbye, local residents told reporters.
Tumwesigye Kajungu, a former schoolteacher who refused to join the sect, said his wife and six children perished in the blaze.
''I last saw my wife on March 8. She told me something was going to happen on the 15th. And if nothing happened, then she would see me again,'' he said.
Dr. Florence Baingana, a psychiatrist in charge of the mental health division in the Ministry of Health, said fears about what would happen in the year 2000 and grinding poverty had fueled the religious sect movement in Uganda.
''People have these gaps in their lives, spiritual gaps, and they look for different ways of filling them like joining cults. Our history has made us more vulnerable because life has been very hard,'' she said.
There were conflicting reports of when the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was established. Some say it was 1989, others 1994.
Mugenyi said police wanted to close down the Kanungu compound last September but said the fact that police officers were members of the cult made it more difficult to close it down. He said that four current and two former officers died in the fire. Police were looking for any adult members of the sect who may have survived the fire, Mugenyi said, adding that they would be charged with murder if caught ''because they brought innocent children into the church.''
In a separate case in the mid-1980s, when Uganda was emerging from 15 years of bloody civil war, a woman calling herself a spirit medium said she could lead a guerrilla army through battle unscathed. Alice Auma Lakwena told members of her Holy Spirit Movement they would be protected from bullets by rubbing themselves with oil pressed from shea nuts.
In 1987, she sought refuge in neighboring Kenya. Her cousin, Joseph Kony, took up the insurgency and called it the Lord's Resistance Army and said it was based on the Ten Commandments. The LRA is believed responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people in northern Uganda and the abduction of children and youths.

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) -- The death toll from a church fire in Uganda believed to be a mass suicide of parishioners had reached at least 500, officials said today as they prepared for a mass burial of the charred and disfigured bodies.
Four days after the fire at the church compound belonging to the Christian sect Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, police said they had counted 500 bodies.
"It may be a total of 600," said police spokesman Asumani Mugenyi, adding that burial in a mass grave would begin today.
Earlier reports had put the number of victims at between 235 and 470.
Police said all five leaders of the sect, four of them former Roman Catholic priests or lay workers, had died in the Friday morning blaze just outside Kanungu trading center, 220 miles southwest of Kampala.
Mugenyi identified the leaders as Cledonia Mwerinde, 40, a former prostitute who built the group's compound on the farm of her late father; Joseph Kibweteere, 68, a former Roman Catholic priest in Kabale diocese north of Kanungu; and Dominic Kataribabo, 32, Joseph Kasapurari, 39, and John Kamagara, 69 -- all reported to be former priests.
Mugenyi said the identification of the alleged leaders was not based on forensic evidence but on "comments from local people" who told police the five had been inside the building -- said to have been sealed from the inside before the fire began.
Syncretic Christian religious sects are mushrooming across Africa as many people become disillusioned with the inability of politicians to improve their lives.
The Kanungu sect has branches in several other parts of Uganda, and its members used only gestures to communicate, reportedly for fear of breaking commandments. But they do sing and pray aloud.
In the wake of the disaster, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni today warned the nation's religious leaders against those who might endanger the lives of the unsuspecting.
The government "believes in the freedom of worship. It also has a duty to protect the lives of the people of Uganda ... and to ensure that Ugandans are not at the mercy of some dangerous and opportunistic individuals who parade themselves as religious leaders," a statement from Museveni's office said.
Following the deadly blaze, rural people who lived near the compound told police and reporters that members had told them about a sighting of the Virgin Mary and that something big was going to happen. Kibweteere had reportedly predicted the end of the world on Dec. 31. When that didn't happen, he moved the date up to Dec. 31, 2000.
Last week, sect members feasted on roast bull and soda after selling their possessions and telling friends goodbye, local residents told reporters.
Tumwesigye Kajungu, a former schoolteacher who refused to join the sect, said his wife and six children perished in the blaze.
"I last saw my wife on March 8. She told me something was going to happen on the 15th. And if nothing happened, then she would see me again," he said.
Dr. Florence Baingana, a psychiatrist in charge of the mental health division in the Ministry of Health, said fears about what would happen in the year 2000 and grinding poverty had fueled the religious sect movement in Uganda.
"People have these gaps in their lives, spiritual gaps, and they look for different ways of filling them like joining cults. Our history has made us more vulnerable because life has been very hard," she said.
There were conflicting reports of when the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was established. Some say it was 1989, others 1994.
Mugenyi said police wanted to close down the Kanungu compound last September but said the fact that police officers were members of the cult made it more difficult to close it down. He said that four current and two former officers died in the fire.
Police were looking for any adult members of the sect who may have survived the fire, Mugenyi said, adding that they would be charged with murder if caught "because they brought innocent children into the church."
In a separate case in the mid-1980s, when Uganda was emerging from 15 years of bloody civil war, a woman calling herself a spirit medium said she could lead a guerrilla army through battle unscathed. Alice Auma Lakwena told members of her Holy Spirit Movement they would be protected from bullets by rubbing themselves with oil pressed from shea nuts.
In 1987, she sought refuge in neighboring Kenya. Her cousin, Joseph Kony, took up the insurgency and called it the Lord's Resistance Army and said it was based on the Ten Commandments. The LRA is believed responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people in northern Uganda and the abduction of children and youths.

KANUNGU, Uganda, March 20 (Reuters) - Ugandan officials said on Monday up to 500 Doomsday cult members died in a fire set deliberately inside their church and police found even more bodies inside the cult's pit latrine and vegetable garden.
``From examining the bodies, we estimate there are between 400 and 500 in the church,'' said Richard Opira, district public health officer in the remote village where the mass suicide took place on Friday.

KAMPALA, March 20 (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.

KANUNGU, Uganda, March 19 –– Before the bell rang summoning them to the long, low building where more than 300 of them would die, members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God gave no clue that the apocalypse they had so long predicted was in its final countdown.
Devotees moved about the tidy hillside compound cloaked in the clothes--green robes trimmed in white--and the almost total silence that area residents had come to associate with the peculiar band. The work they put into new construction signaled an investment in the future at odds with the leader's prediction that the world would end in 2000. A new sanctuary had been built.. There were stated plans to buy a generator.
That, neighbors were told, was why they were buying so much gasoline.
The truth exploded Friday morning, in a fireball that brought much of the nearby farming village of Kanungu scrambling to the scene of what could be the largest mass suicide since 1978, when 914 people died by drinking a cyanide-laced fruit drink in Jonestown, Guyana. Members of the Ugandan doomsday cult had barricaded themselves in a former dormitory and, after singing and chanting, heard a final prayer.
Then a match was struck.
The final death toll remains to be tallied. But a preliminary count was provided late today by a government pathologist who moved gingerly across a concrete floor of charred remains, counting skulls.
"Three hundred thirty," the doctor announced, when he put down his pen. "Or more. Because some are ash. Burned completely to ash."
The tableau brought a steady stream of visitors to the hillside compound today about 217 miles southwest of the capital, Kampala, to gawk, debate causes and look for loved ones. Almost everyone held a sprig of rosemary to his nose against the stench, plucked from the herb garden planted below the compound's primary school.
"They would try to persuade me to come," said Diana Bitamba, 35, who employed several cult members on her nearby farm. "They were saying that the days are getting over, that the world was perishing so we should come and join them and go to heaven together.
"They were not worried about this thing," she said. "They were happy."
She stood above the corpse of a child cradled by the remains of a man. With a stick, she plucked at the dead man's collar. It had no flaps.
"That could be a priest," said Paul Manzi. "You can see by the collar."
The sect was formed in 1989 by former Roman Catholic priests and nuns. One of them, Joseph Kibweteere, announced that the Virgin Mary had appeared before him in a vision. He said he was to found a mission devoted to living by the Ten Commandments.
Kibweteere believed that the world would end on Dec. 31, 1999. When it did not, he reportedly pushed the date back a year. Then he called members from their homes across Uganda to Kanungu.
"The leaders notified the members that the time was at hand, so they gathered for the final revelation of the end of the world," said Stephen Okwalinga, regional police commander for southwestern Uganda.
Across Africa, religious sects are growing as many people become more and more disillusioned with the inability of politicians to improve their lives.. Uganda has a particularly difficult history of religious groups and violence.. The two main rebel groups at war with the government are based on religion. The Lord's Resistance Army attacks villages and carries off children in the semiarid north; in the western mountains, the Allied Democratic Forces claims a Muslim base.
In the late 1990s, the government began requiring cults to register with the government. The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God complied. Richard Mutazindwa, the second-highest government official at the time, recalled friendly chats with adherents--chats that took place only after the members prayed for guidance on whether it was all right to talk.
"It is man's desire to satisfy himself being right with God," said Okwalinga, of what drew people to the sect.
"That longing," said Mutazindwa. "It's personal conviction and belief, and wanting to find a better world than this one."
Much has been made, he noted, of adherents selling their worldly goods before joining the sect, especially as the deadline for doomsday approached. Residents spoke of getting deals on cattle, goats and even motorbikes as the local market was flooded with goods.
But Mutazindwa said few of the devotees were wealthy. "Those who joined were the poorest of the poor," he said. "There were old women; they were not rich. But they sold what little they had and came here. They had Catholic fathers who were trained and ordained. One could not suspect that they had other, hidden motives."
In fact, authorities said deception set the stage for Friday's inferno. As adherents answered the call to gather outside Kanungu, sect leaders told local authorities that they were planning a party for Saturday. "The local authorities were even invited," Okwalinga said.
The names of those who arrived were duly noted in a register. Authorities counted 235, about 100 fewer than the bodies counted today. "Maybe they forgot to count the children," said the pathologist, who refused to give his name.
Some adherents were followed to Kanungu by relatives, anxious to bring them home. Okwalinga said the relatives were told to come for them Friday afternoon. At midmorning, a bell was rung. Members made their way down the steep hill. On the way, some paused at a storehouse to spill down the path the food they would no longer be needing. The walkway is caked with millet flour.
Two of the waiting relatives refused to go far. Police quoted them as saying the explosion came about a half-hour after the doors to the dormitory were closed and apparently locked from the inside. Authorities dismissed rumors that two cult leaders escaped. "We have reason to believe they are in there," Okwalinga said.
The hall was divided into two rooms, made one when the explosion knocked down the separating wall. Most of the bodies were in the room nearer the new church; the area nearest the door is especially crowded. Little appears to have burned except the people and the wood on the windows that witnesses said had been boarded from the outside. The concrete walls bear nary a scorch mark, while the bodies clearly burned hot. The mass is stippled by human humerus bones.
"We heard some people went around buying fuel," said Manzi, a customs officer who had arrived from Kampala. He was looking for his sister and her daughters. "They told my mother they were going to Kampala, but they're not there. They have been members of this organization. Of course I think they're here."
Another possibility remained, however. Nearby, in what was described as the "leader's house," still more bodies were found. The corpses were discovered beneath the concrete lid of what was built as a privy.
These victims, who had not been burned, appeared to have been dead perhaps a week, witnesses estimated. Neither the number nor the manner of death was known. Onlookers speculated the bodies were those of people done away with for threatening to expose plans for the mass suicide.
Okwalinga, the police commander, said it was too early to say. "We haven't even had time to look at those," he said.

The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God had led a relatively uneventful existence until the spectacular self-inflicted holocaust that appears to have consumed several hundred of its members. Located in a remote farming community in the volatile south-west corner of Uganda, the cult was quiet and inward-looking..
The mass immolation was apparently planned as a result of a doomsday scenario envisioned by cult leader and former opposition politician Joseph Kibwetere. He established the cult in the late 1980s - one of many such groups in Uganda. It was registered as a charity whose aim was to practise the Ten Commandments and preach the word of Jesus Christ.
Modern Noah
There were tenuous links to Roman Catholicism, which is a strong force in the region.
Catholic paraphernalia was prominent at the group's premises and a number of defrocked Roman Catholic priests and nuns made up Mr Kibwetere's chief aides.
He was last seen in hospital in neighbouring Kenya suffering from heart problems, according to Ugandan newspapers.
Local farmers said the group had described their church, where members held a final party before dousing themselves in fuel and setting themselves alight, as a kind of Noah's ark.
Cult included defrocked former Catholic clergy
"This is the ark and they were told that at the time of calamity they would come here," said a resident of a neighbouring village. "They were told that at a certain time this year the world would end and so the leaders made it happen and perhaps the people there believed it had happened," she said.
'No trouble'
The cult is thought to have been a thriving community, with more than 400 listed members, all of whom had sold their property before they joined, using the proceeds to buy the land where they died.
There was a primary school and cult members, who were drawn from south and central Uganda and neighbouring Rwanda, spent their days in communal pursuits.
They were described by local people as disciplined, polite and never causing any trouble.
But the Ugandan press had reported that the cult had been closed down in 1998 for its insanitary conditions, using child labour, and possibly kidnapping children.

The continent of Africa is not alone when it comes to the emergence of millennial religious cults that have put a cosmic significance on the end of the 20th Century.
But over the last decade, the countries of East Africa have been a particular focus for such groups led by charismatic figures telling people the world is about to end and they must prepare for a new reality.
Confused and traumatised communities turned to charismatic self-styled prophets who blamed authority - the government and the Catholic Church - for bringing the wrath of God upon them..
Terrible famines have hit Ethiopia and Somalia, Rwanda has gone through an ethnic genocide of unimaginable proportions.
The population of Uganda, having already suffered mass killings under Idi Amin, were suddenly confronted by a strange and devastating epidemic we now know as Aids.
Confused and traumatised communities turned to charismatic self-styled prophets who blamed authority - the government and the Catholic Church - for bringing the wrath of God upon them.
Two cults raided
The Ugandan Government has dispersed two cults in Uganda over the past year, claiming they posed a threat both to themselves and to the local community.
Police raided a compound of the 1,000-member World Message Last Warning Church in the central town of Luwero last September.
The said they found seven girls who had been sexually assaulted, three boys being held against their will and 18 unidentified shallow graves.
In November about 100 riot police raided and disbanded an illegal camp at Ntusi in Sembabule district, home of a self-styled teenage prophetess who was said to eat nothing but honey.
The authorities regarded the camp as a security threat, with rebels known to have infiltrated the area.
Transition to rebel movement
Others have sought solace and redemption in the belief that any world capable of heaping such terror on them must be close to its end..
Groups such as the Holy Spirit Movement have evolved into fully-fledged rebel movements, whose followers continue to kidnap children and launch suicide attacks in the belief that magic oils will make them immune from government bullets.
Others have sought solace and redemption in the belief that any world capable of heaping such terror on them must be close to its end.
As details emerge about the deaths in Kanungu, it's becoming clear that members of this sect - the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God - had been making preparations for the end of their lives which came in such a horrific manner.

Four police officers were among the hundreds who burned to death in an apparent mass suicide in Uganda.
"These are the very people we expect to warn us about these kind of dangers," said Interior Minister Edward Rugumayo, who visited the scene on Monday.
Professor Rugamayo is expected to report back directly to President Yoweri Museveni, who has urged religious and community leaders to guide people away from cults.
Officials estimate that up to 500 people died in the blaze at the headquarters of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God cult on Friday.
A tangle of charred bodies remained in the makeshift church on Monday in the small trading centre of Kanungu, about 320km (200 miles), southwest of Kampala.
Ugandan newspapers said that a local prison was preparing to arrange a mass burial.

Crackdown

President Museveni said although his government believed in the freedom of worship, it also had a duty to protect people from "dangerous" religious leaders.
"The president was actually angered to learn that the adults who carried out what he called 'this barbarity' had taken children with them and subjected them to this cruelty," his spokeswoman said.
Mr Museveni "criticised the leaders of some religious cults, which are increasingly luring unsuspecting people, taking advantage of their property and misleading them into beliefs that endanger their lives," Ugandan radio said.
Police said the adults who died would be treated as suicide victims, but those under 18 would be regarded as murder victims.
Most of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, reduced to husks piled one on top of another and fused together by the heat.
Identification will be almost impossible and it is unlikely an exact death toll will ever be reached.
Police said rescuers who arrived at the scene had been unable to reach the cult members, as the doors and windows had been nailed shut.

End of the world

Inspector General John Kisembo said all the evidence pointed to a mass suicide.
"We know that the leaders of the church must have planned it."
Witnesses said there were signs that the cult was getting ready for a big event in the days leading up to the fire.
One report said the group's leader, the charismatic former opposition politician Joseph Kibweteere, told his followers to sell their possessions and prepare to go to heaven.
It was not known whether Mr Kibweteere and other leaders, including several ex-communicated Catholic priests and nuns, died with their followers.
Evidence of the cult's Roman Catholic roots lay scattered around the compound.
Three statues of Jesus stood in the abandoned offices, while a large crucifix had been laid carefully on green cloth draped across a chair.

In the land that Idi Amin once made a byword for the darkest horrors of Africa, piles of charred and contorted bodies lie clustered in the burnt-out shell of a makeshift church. Their hair and clothes are burnt away, their features charred beyond recognition.
A child is curled up like a foetus on the ground. Some of the corpses have arms stretched out in what looks like an appeal for help. Others lie face down or balanced on their elbows with their heads turned back in agony. One or two are still smouldering, 48 hours after what the Ugandan authorities believe to have been a mass suicide - the second-worst on record.
Officials were last night still unable to say how many had perished in Kanungu, a remote community 200 miles southwest of Kampala. But as police and health workers struggled with the grisly task of separating and identifying the charred bodies, they said it appeared that at least 300 people had died.
Local officials have said they fear that the number of dead from the obscure cult called the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God could be double that figure. It is thought some of the children had been kidnapped and press-ganged into joining the cult, which was based in Kanungu.
Whether the church or the people within it had been doused with fuel before the fire was ignited was not yet clear, the authorities said. A large drum of fuel was discovered at one end of the church, along with the remains of several jerry cans.
As a light rain fell through the collapsed iron roof of the building, soldiers and policemen yesterday stood guard around the makeshift church at Kanungu as grieving relatives wept." The scene is one of horror," Asuman Mugenyi, a Ugandan police spokesman said. He said that there were only about two or three bodies that could be identified as men or women.
"The rest of the bodies are burnt beyond human shape," he said. "People said they heard screaming but it was all over very quickly."
Local villagers said that it was impossible to know whether all of the cult members knew what was about to happen. There were indications that the cult was gearing up for a big event in the days leading up to the mass suicide, the largest since the death of more than 900 members of the People's Temple sect, including their leader Jim Jones, in Guyana in 1978.
Joseph Kibwetere, the leader of the extremist Christian cult, which included three excommunicated priests and two excommunicated nuns, had described his church as "the boat of Noah".
He had predicted that the world was going to come to an end on December 31, 1999. The cult leader revised his prediction to December 31, 2000 when the first failed to come true.
Members of the cult had bought crates of soft drinks for a party on Wednesday thrown by Mr Kibwetere. On Thursday, cult members went around nearby villages saying goodbye to locals.
The villagers in Kanungu said that the cult members believed that the Virgin Mary "had promised to appear at the camp and carry them to Heaven". The believers, many of them former Roman Catholics, had sold their belongings and donned white, green and black robes before entering the church, formerly a school dining room.
The doors had been locked and the windows boarded and nailed shut from early Friday morning. Police said that it was not known whether Mr Kibwetere had died with his congregation.
All the adult deaths would be treated as suicide, while the deaths of everyone under 18 would be regarded as murder, officials said.
The Ugandan Government has in the past cracked down on cults, claiming that they are a threat to its members and the local communities.
In September, police closed down the World Message Warning Church, whose leaders were accused of sexually harassing and abducting members. In November, police disbanded another cult in western Uganda which was led by a self-styled teenage prophet who was said to survive by eating only honey.
"We have been disbanding cults because they are a security risk," Edward Rugamayo, Uganda's Internal Affairs Minister, said. Mr Rugamayo added: "If we had known about this group, we would have disbanded them as well."

KANUNGU, Uganda, March 19 -- Residents and the police in this remote village believe that more than 400 members of a religious cult may have died in a suicide fire on Friday, but officials said a definite number would be difficult to establish.
Forensic experts were expected to arrive from Kampala, the capital, on Monday to search the ruins of the church where the cult members died. With many bodies burned beyond recognition, officials said, it may be difficult to determine whether the cult's founder, Joseph Kibwetere, a former opposition politician, was among the dead.
The only official estimate of the death toll is based on the cult's registered membership last year, about 235. But the police say that later converts may also have died, and told The Associated Press that the toll could reach as high as 470. Local residents said about 400 cult members were not accounted for.
"We know the camp had many more occupants than usual," said Steven Mujuni, the local army commander.
The bodies lay untouched today in the wreckage of the prayer house of the cult, called the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. The bodies of at least 11 children could be seen..
Police officers and soldiers stood guard over the blackened shell of the building. Grieving relatives wept, and villagers and their children peered through windows and doors.
Some family members of the victims had to be restrained. "Leave me alone, I want to go with them," Justine Rushenya shouted as a soldier kept her from the building.
Ms. Rushenya said she had lost 13 family members in the mass suicide, including her mother and father and several brothers and sisters.
"I have lost all these people, and I don't know how we will recover," she kept repeating.
Rutenda Didas, a local official, said: "We are trying to keep the area clear for health reasons. We hope they will come to start clearing it tomorrow."
In a nearby dormitory, chicken bones and millet bread bore witness to the last party the cult members enjoyed. Local officials said the cultists had slaughtered a cow and ordered 70 crates of soda the night before the fire.
Cult members had sold their possessions, dressed up in their finest white, green and black robes, gathered in the church and nailed the doors and windows shut.
According to witnesses and officials, they sang and chanted for hours, before dousing themselves in fuel and setting their church on fire in the world's second biggest mass suicide of recent times. The largest took place in 1978 when an American pastor, Jim Jones, led 914 followers, including 294 children, to their deaths at Jonestown, Guyana.
A villager named Florence said the members of the sect had called the church the boat of Noah. "This is the ark, and they were told that at the time of calamity they would come here," she said.
"They were told that at a certain time this year the world would end, and so the leaders made it happen, and perhaps the people there believed it had happened," she said.

CESNUR reproduces or quotes documents from the media and different sources on a number of religious issues. Unless otherwise indicated, the opinions expressed are those of the document's author(s), not of CESNUR or its directors.