A Kenyan doomsday cult leader and 29 associates have been charged with the murder of 191 children.

Paul Mackenzie and his fellow defendants all denied the charges at a court in the coastal town of Malindi.

One suspect was found mentally unfit to stand trial.

Prosecutors argue Mackenzie ordered his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so they could go to heaven before the world ended.

The children were among more than 429 bodies found over the course of months of exhumations across tens of thousands of acres of the Shakahola Forest in the coastal county of Kilifi.

The followers of Mackenzie’s Good News International Church lived in several secluded settlements in an 800-acre area within the forest.

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Mackenzie was arrested in April last year and has already been charged with terrorism-related crimes, manslaughter and torture.

He was also convicted in December of producing and distributing films without a licence and sentenced to 12 months in jail.

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A former taxi driver, Mackenzie told cult members they could not send their children to school or go to hospital when they were ill, branding such institutions as Satanic, according to some of his followers.

His lawyer has said he is cooperating with the investigation into the deaths.

The 30 defendants are due back in court on 7 March for a bond hearing, the judge said.

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