KAMPALA, Uganda -- Uganda sent hundreds of troops into neighboring Congo and beefed up police and military presence Thursday after rebels who slaughtered eight foreign tourists reportedly threatened further attacks.
The search was focusing on dense jungle just over the border, where the Hutu rebels are based. Rwandan soldiers also were involved in the manhunt, which began in earnest Wednesday.An FBI team, meanwhile, was in Kampala investigating the deaths of two Americans among those killed Monday in remote campgrounds in southwestern Uganda's Impenetrable Forest where rare mountain gorillas live.
Four Britons and two New Zealanders also were killed. Six other tourists were seized but survived.
Uganda's government-owned New Vision newspaper said the army arrested a suspect who had apparently helped brief rebels on the positions of tourists and the locations of their belongings in the park before the attack.
The newspaper, citing an unidentified source, said several people had been heard briefing the rebels before the attack. "They seemed to know which tents were occupied and by who," the source said.
On the Ugandan side of the border, police reinforcements were sent into the western districts of Kasese and Bundibugyo after rebels distributed letters warning they would launch further attacks, the private Central Broadcasting Service reported Thursday.
It said roadblocks had been set up in two villages in those areas, which are north of the Kisoro district where the tourists were killed. The report did not say how many forces were deployed, but Ugandan officials said a battalion of about 600 soldiers was sent into Congo.
The rebels were among Hutu fighters who fled Rwanda in 1994 after killing more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in a government-orchestrated genocide.