A 38-year-old woman yesterday testified in the Ndola High Court against her former husband accused of burning seven people to death and attempting to burn five others who included herself.

Grace Changwe, a peasant farmer of Local village in Serenje told Ndola High Court Judge Munalula Lisimba that her former husband, Haggai Kalokoni threatened to harm her, her family and the village in which they lived in August this year.

Kalokoni is alleged to have said he would wipe out the whole village.

This is a matter in which Kalokoni, 38, of 4045 Kabushi Township in Ndola, unemployed is charged with seven counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder.

Particulars of the offence are that Kalokoni murdered seven people on August 8 this year and attempted to murder five others at the Cultural village in Masala Township in Ndola.

Ms Changwe said the incident happened when she had already divorced her husband and was living with her sister in the cultural village in Masala Township.

She explained that Kalokoni went to their house around 11:00 hours, picked up a child they had together, and another child whom she had before she got married to Kalokoni and bought them fritters.

He later took the children back to the Cultural village and he went back around 19:00 hours and sat at the back of their house and started drinking alcohol.

Ms Changwe said she asked him to leave but that he refused until the whole family went to sleep.

Kalokoni then started demanding for his child, but that Ms Changwe refused and asked him to return in the morning to see the child as it was late.

He then started crying and told her that he was going to do some thing that would make her cry for ever.

"He said he was going to do something that would leave the Cultural village empty, saying that people would point fingers the next morning that people once lived at the village," Ms Changwe said.

She said two hours later the house caught fire and she and some four others managed to ran out of the house but two children in the room in which she slept were burnt to death and five others that were sleeping in the other room also got burnt to death.

Ms Changwe said her sister Judith Mulimba, Eda Malambo, Mavis Malambo, Maggie Malambo, Gloria Malambo, Isata Nkandu, her daughter and Emmanuel Sichilongo were all burnt to death.

She said she could not tell if anyone in the other room where the fire started had lit a candle or not nor could she know what had caused the fire.

Hearing continues.