8 kidnapped tourists killed in Uganda
KAMPALA, Uganda, March 2 (UPI) - Rwandan Hutu rebels kidnapped 14
Western tourists
and brutally killed eight of them - including an American couple from
Oregon - as they were
forcibly marched through the dense forests of western Uganda.
A State Department official closely involved in investigating today's
incident said the two
slain Americans are Robert Haubner, an employee of Intel Corp. in
Portland, and his wife
Susan Miller. An American and a British national as well as
Australians and New Zealanders
survived the kidnapping.
Contrary to earlier reports that they might have fallen in the
crossfire of a partially successful
rescue attempt by the Ugandan military, the official said they were
systematically tortured
and then slain.
"They were brutally murdered under gruesome circumstances," the
official, speaking under
conditions of anonymity, told United Press International.
State Department spokesman James Foley said today the 14 Western
captives, who were
in the Bwindi National Park to observe mountain gorillas, were
abducted by nearly 150
armed militants from neighboring Rwanda.
The abductors, who are being pursued by the Ugandan military,
"murdered" their captives
as they marched through the forest, he said. Those who survived did
so by escaping, Foley
said, not as a result of being caught in a crossfire between the
rebels and Ugandan forces.
"The victims were killed by their captives as they marched through
the forest," Foley said.
"There was no crossfire."
The State Department issued a travel alert for Uganda today,
"strongly urging" Americans to
postpone travel to the western regions of the central African nation.
The British Broadcasting Corp. reported that among the seven tourists
rescued Monday and
airlifted to the Ugandan capital Kampala was France's Deputy
Ambassador to Uganda,
Anne Peltier, who negotiated the release of all the French tourists
and some Australians.
She told the BBC: "We were hearing a lot of firing all around the
tent where we were
sleeping. Suddenly some soldiers came in the tent and they asked for
money, for jewelry, for
watches. They took everything... we had of some value."
The British High Commissioner in Uganda, Michael Cook, described them
as shocked but
not seriously injured.
The Times of London reported the attackers were armed with spears,
guns and machetes,
and also killed a game warden and set cars and tents alight before
fleeing into the forest.
The Rwandan Hutu rebels who committed this week's kidnapping are
believed to be part of
the group that last August captured 11 people. Three foreign tourists
in the group have not
been heard of since.
Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher
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