A camp at Bwindi National Park where the tourists were killed RELATED VIDEO CNN's Catherine Bond looks at the aftermath of tourist killings in Uganda Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K Freed hostage Linda Adams talks about her rebel captors as CNN's David Compton reports Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K  ALSO: Uganda murders latest setback for regional tourism Gorilla habitat and tourist destination is Hutu rebel rear base Uganda victims include two top U.S. Intel executives Ugandan rebels kill 5 in a camp for displaced people INTERACTIVE: The Uganda tourist murders: Profiles of some of the victims

March 5, 1999
Web posted at: 4:30 a.m. EST (0930 GMT)

KAMPALA, Uganda (CNN) -- A team of British investigators arrived in Uganda on Friday to help hunt down the Hutu rebels who slaughtered eight tourists and a Ugandan game warden this week.

In addition to the three experts from Scotland Yard who arrived in Kampala on Friday morning, U.S. officials said a second FBI team flew into Kampala on Thursday, backing up four agents who arrived a day earlier.

Rwandan Hutu rebels slaughtered four British tourists, two Americans and two New Zealanders on Monday. The attackers then fled into the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Uganda's army said 15 of the attackers were killed in a Rwandan army ambush on Wednesday and that the hunt was on to capture the rest.

The deputy director of Uganda's criminal investigation department, Erasmus Opio, said on Friday the FBI and Scotland Yard teams would work in Rwanda and Congo as well as Uganda. "They'll be covering all three countries," he said.

The tourists had come for a vacation adventure tracking rare mountain in the Bwindi National Park of southwestern Uganda, also known as the Impenetrable Forest.

More than 100 Hutu rebels attacked three tourist camp sites at dawn on Monday. They seized 31 tourists and then singled out 14 -- mainly Americans, Britons and other English speakers -- to take as captives on a long trek into the jungle.

Hours later, they butchered eight of them -- four men and four women -- and released the other six with a message warning the West to cut off all ties with Rwanda's government, which is dominated by leaders of the country's minority Tutsi population.

Calls for justice

Beside the bodies of two victims, the rebels left postcards with messages aimed at justifying the slaughter.

"This is the punishment for the Anglo-Saxons who have sold us all to protect the minority and oppress the majority," said one message scrawled in bad French on the back of one postcard.

U.S. President Bill Clinton said on Thursday his government would not be intimidated and was determined to make sure the murderers are captured.

"We will not forget these crimes, nor rest until those who committed them are brought to justice," he said, calling the murders "senseless and cowardly."

"If this attack was intended as a warning to our nation to stop supporting those in the region seeking reconciliation and justice, those who committed it should understand that we will not be deterred in any way," Clinton said.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has vowed to capture or kill all the rebels who took part in the assault.

The Ugandan army says it is now pursuing the rebels in neighboring Congo.

"We are looking for them to kill them, and we'll get them,'' Lt. Col. Benon Biraro told CNN.

The bodies of the eight murdered tourists have been moved to a mortuary in Kampala and were expected to be flown home on Friday, although U.S. and British officials said they were determined to keep the flight plans secret.

The Hutu rebels played a leading role in a massacre of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994.

After being forced into exile by the Tutsi-led rebel army that seized power and stopped the genocide, they have continued their ethnic war from bases in eastern Congo, formerly Zaire.

CNN's Catherine Bond Reuters contributed to this report.

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