Experts dissected the bodies of nine children, aged between one and ten, and a woman.
“Most of them were hungry,” the government’s chief pathologist, Johansen Odur, said after autopsies at the Malindi Hospital morgue.
He added: “We saw the traits of people who weren’t eating. There was no food in their stomachs and the layer of fat was very small,” explaining, “We examined their bodies and all their organs were intact. There are no missing organs yet.”
But he noted that “from what we have heard there are indications that they were strangled, and this could be one of the reasons for the suffocation. This was present in two children”.
“Officially the autopsy begins immediately,” Home Secretary Keithor Kindeke told reporters outside a hospital morgue in the coastal town of Malindi.
“We are here to witness a very crucial step. This process should take about a week if all goes well,” Kennedy said.
Investigators will also take DNA samples to help identify the dead, though final results could take months, Odor said.
Dozens of bodies, mostly children, were found in mass graves in nearby Chakhola forest.
However, the death toll of 109, which includes a number of people found alive but who died while being taken to hospital, is not definitive.
An in-depth investigation has been launched into the Good News International Church group led by Paul Mackenzie Nthingi, who say the famine is sending followers to heaven.
But Kennedy said on Friday that initial reports indicated that “some of the victims may not have starved to death. Other methods were used, including harming them.”
New Life Church leader Ezequiel Odero, who was arrested on Thursday and ‘subjected to legal trials’, is suspected of murder, assisted suicide, kidnapping, extremism, crimes against humanity, child abuse , fraud and money laundering.
Prosecutor Peter Kiprop said last week there was “credible information” linking the bodies found in the forest to the deaths of a number of “innocent and vulnerable followers of Odero”.
Kiprop said in court papers that Odero and Nthengi were “partners in business investments”, including a television station which was used to broadcast “extremist messages” to their supporters.
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