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Shakahola massacre: Woman died of starvation hours after giving birth

Kenya red cross society staff off load bodies at the mortuary for postmortem. [Victor Ogalle, Standard]

A woman whose body was retrieved from a grave at Shakahola in Malindi died hours after she had given birth, an autopsy revealed on Thursday.

Government Chief Pathologist Johansen Oduor said the unidentified woman died of starvation just hours after she had delivered a baby.

"In today's autopsies, we discovered that a woman had delivered hours before she succumbed to the pangs of hunger and we also noticed complications in her uterus," said Oduor.

The woman's body had signs of starvation and was badly emaciated. He said the pathologists have not established the whereabouts of the newborn.

"She looked like she had fasted for a week when she delivered and died immediately,” said Oduor.

Oduor further said that they examined 24 bodies yesterday, including three children and 21 adults.

"Most of them had features of starvation, two had head injuries meaning that they died due to blunt trauma to the head," he added.

The number of postmortems conducted so far are 100 since the exercise started on Monday, with Dr Oduor leading a team of pathologists, DCI and Homicide Unit detectives, government chemist officials and forensic experts.

"We have done 100 autopsies and are remaining with 11. We are expecting to finish tomorrow then go back to the scene for exhumation of identified graves by next week," said Oduor.