KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — After surviving a rebel attack that killed eight foreign tourists, American Elizabeth Garland left Uganda's remote jungle with a sinking heart rather than a sense of relief.

The tourists who had escaped capture by Rwandan rebels Monday couldn't wait to get away.

But the Ohio-born anthropologist and Fulbright scholar, who was living in Uganda's Buhoma region to study the effects of wildlife tourism on local communities, is leaving behind her friends, knowing they face a bleak future without tourism revenue.

``My heart was sinking,'' Garland told The Associated Press on Thursday. ``I knew it was going to be the last time that any Bazungu (white people) were going to be in Buhoma for a really long time and how heartbreaking that was to people already trying to deal with this incredibly traumatizing thing.''

Garland hid in her tent when rebels stormed several camps in Bwindi National Park on Monday, firing guns and throwing grenades that ``sounded like the Fourth of July.''

She knew that she was lucky. Fourteen tourists were abducted and marched through Uganda's Impenetrable Forest on the Congolese border. Along the way, eight were hacked to death with machetes and axes. Six were released.

Still, the experience shook her, and she feels Ugandan residents are also suffering a devastating impact, one that is being ignored by a world interest drawn almost exclusively by the foreigners killed.

Even as she spoke, world leaders continued to voice their condemnation of the slaughter, while the Ugandan army intensified a joint manhunt with Rwandan forces, chasing down the rebels based in eastern Congo and vowing to destroy them.

Soldiers patrolled the partially burned and looted camps Thursday, while further north at the Rwenzori Mountains another rebel group, the Allied Democratic Front, launched its second attack in two days. At least five people were killed, a military officer said.

A private radio report said letters were distributed Thursday warning of fresh rebel attacks, but did not specify who would be targeted or which of three major rebel groups terrorizing Uganda may have drafted the warning.

With FBI investigators already in place and British detectives to arrive today, the bodies of the two Americans, four Britons and two New Zealanders were put into coffins to be sent home today or Saturday.

The Rwandan 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.

The Hutu fighters are angry at the United States, Britain and Uganda for providing aid to the Rwandan government.

Notes left by the rebels on the bodies of victims said U.S. and British citizens were being punished. The rebels also said they wanted to destabilize Uganda and destroy its economy.

Not far from the morgue, where foreign reporters waited for a glimpse of the coffins Thursday, Ugandan colleagues and relatives quietly buried park ranger Paul Wagaba, who was killed trying to ward off the rebels Monday morning.

Garland said Ugandans and Africans in the region have been suffering similar attacks regularly for years, drawing little world interest.

``I in no way want to diminish the tragedy that the families that these people who died are going through, but they have much company in this part of the world,'' she said.

The world reaction has also raised resentment among some Ugandans who believe the international community is putting a different value on African lives.

``Ugandans are enraged,'' said Simon Kaheru, a reporter with the government-owned newspaper New Vision.

``It's a real imbalance between them and us and it's unfair,'' he added. ``We don't matter as human beings as much — apparently.''

Jean Twagiramungu, a resident of Kabale in southwestern Uganda, agreed, referring to past attacks by the rebels.

``I am very sorry about their brutal murder,'' he wrote in a letter published in New Vision newspaper. But he said rebels have committed several massacres in the border area, ``and they will do it again but it hardly makes news. Why?''

Garland, whose work focused on community tourism projects in the region made famous by the 1988 film ``Gorillas in the Mist,'' said she was concerned by the lack of attention to the communities, which would bear the brunt of the insecurity.

She said she was torn by her desire to return to the camp when security is restored, and her concern that by doing so she and other foreign tourists would only draw fresh rebel attacks.

``I am really conflicted about it,'' she said.