Screams in the jungle: mystery Panama cult sacrifices children in sickening exorcism ritual
- Police raid Panama church, arresting 10 people and rescuing 15 captives, including children
- Comes after cult ceremony that killed pregnant woman and six children in a remote village
A week after six children and a pregnant woman were sacrificed in a brutal religious ritual, the inhabitants of a remote village in northwestern Panama fear they might be next.
“No one can sleep. As soon as they hear a cricket or a cockroach everyone’s on high alert,” said Pacifico Blanco.
Blanco lives in Altos del Terron, an isolated indigenous community where the victims of the ritualistic killings were found last week in a mass grave.
Bibles, messages alluding to the devil and a heap of rope can still be seen at the site of the massacre – a makeshift church in dense jungle that was used by an obscure sect that called itself “God’s New Light”.
Police raided the church on January 15, arresting 10 people and rescuing 15 captives, including children, they believe were being prepared for sacrifice.
The mass grave was found a day later, about an hour away from the church.
Vegetation and walls kept the church almost invisible to the outside world and the local community had no idea what was taking place inside.