Malindi — The Malindi Sub-County hospital morgue is full to capacity following the delivery of 78 bodies in pastor Paul Mackenzie's cult which have so far been exhumed.

According to the hospital's administrator Said Ali, the morgue has a capacity of 40 bodies.

Ali stated that following the exhumations at the Shakahola Forest, the morgue now has a more than 100 bodies.

He has appealed to the Kenya Red Cross Society to provide them with refrigerated 40-foot containers to act as mobile morgues to deal with the overflow.

The death toll in a case involving a Kenyan cult that practised starvation climbed to 73 Monday, police sources told AFP as investigators unearthed more corpses from mass graves in a forest near the coast.

A major search is underway near the coastal town of Malindi where dozens of bodies were exhumed over the weekend, sending shockwaves through the country as President William Ruto vowed to crack down on "unacceptable" religious movements.

A full-scale investigation has been launched into the Good News International Church and its leader, named in court documents as Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, who preached that death by starvation delivered followers to God.

Police had previously named the suspect as Makenzie Nthenge.

It is believed some of his devotees could still be hiding in the bush around Shakahola, which was raided by police earlier this month after a tip-off from a local non-profit group.

Since then, a number of people have been rescued and dozens of bodies unearthed in mass graves dug in shallow pits.

"We have 73 bodies from the forest by this evening and the exercise will continue tomorrow," a police officer involved in the probe told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"It is a very sad state of affairs on how these people died and were buried in shallow graves because we found six bodies squeezed in one grave today," he said.

Another senior police official also confirmed the death toll, saying: "Some of the bodies were just in the forest and had not even been buried."