Rwandan Hutu rebels clubbed and hacked to death eight foreign tourists who had gone to Uganda to track rare mountain gorillas, an American survivor, Mr Mark Ross, said yesterday. His account contradicted earlier reports that they had been killed in crossfire between the rebels and Ugandan troops.
Though many aspects of the attack remained confused last night, it appears that the motive for the killings was rebel Hutu anger at British and US support for the Tutsi-led government in Rwanda.
"The ones I saw had their heads crushed in and deep slashes with machetes," Mr Ross told reporters in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. He said the dead were four Britons, two Americans and two New Zealanders - four men and four women. One of the women had been raped before being killed.
Diplomats said the bodies had been recovered.
Mr Ross said he and five other foreigners had been freed by their captors and told to take a message `warning' the international community not to deal with Rwanda's government.
Mr Ross said he heard the rebels discussing how to kill a French woman, but after her daughter began crying she was spared. The eight holidaymakers were "executed" before the gun battle, he said. "There wasn't any rescue attempt."
A former student from St Albans, Hertfordshire, was last night named as one of the Britons killed. Grief-stricken relatives of Mr Mark Lindgren (23) said that he had been in Uganda for a last holiday before returning home to start his first job after finishing his studies last summer. Two other victims, named late last night, were US citizens and senior executives of Intel Corp, the computer chip manufacturer. They were the company's global chief of customer support, Rob Haubner (48) and his wife Susan Miller (42), who was a senior tradeshow manager. The US government last night condemned the massacre as "abominable".
The rebels, who have bases in the Congo, are remnants of the Interahamwe militia, responsible for Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 people, mainly ethnic Tutsis, were murdered in just 100 days.
After the present Rwandan government took power, many of the Interahamwe militiamen fled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Britain's High Commissioner to Uganda, Mr Michael Cook, said Ugandan forces had chased the rebels and they exchanged gunfire.
When asked if the tourists were killed in a rescue attempt, the Ugandan Vice-President, Ms Specioza Kazibwe, said: "We do not know who did what, and to whom."
Thirty-one tourists were initially abducted at three camp sites in the Bwindi National Park in south-western Uganda at dawn on Monday. Four Ugandans, a game warden and three rangers, were killed in a gun-battle with the rebels.
Seventeen of the hostages escaped or were freed soon after, but the rebels then led their 14 remaining captives into the densely-forested hills and Ugandan troops started a manhunt.
Ms Linda Adams, a Californian woman released by the rebels after she faked an asthma attack, said the rebels had singled out Americans and Britons to take as their hostages but treated them all well in the first few hours of the ordeal.
The Bwindi National Park, also known as the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, is one of the last strongholds of the rare mountain gorilla, portrayed in the film Gorillas In The Mist.
The "gorilla tourism", which provides vital revenue for their conservation, is likely to be devastated by this massacre, according to a spokeswoman for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, named after the naturalist on whose work the film was based.
Rachel Donnelly adds from London:
Britain is seeking urgent clarification from the Ugandan government about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the four British holidaymakers.
While the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, described the murders as "wickedness beyond belief", the Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, told the Commons the precise circumstances of the killings were still unclear.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Office has updated its travel advice, warning against all travel to the border areas of Uganda.