A US military psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in a shooting rampage at a key defence base has been moved to a San Antonio medical facility, the army's only 'level one' trauma centre, as investigators searched for the motive behind the horrific incident.

39-year-old Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an American citizen of Jordanian descent, was captured after he was shot four times by a woman police officer following his shooting spree at Fort Hood military base in San Antonio near Houston on Friday.

Media here said the Virginia-born Hasan was being deployed to Afghanistan, instead of Iraq as reported earlier. He has been moved to Brook Medical Army Centre in San Antonio and is in stable condition. Medical centre spokesman Dewey Mitchell could not provide details on the decision to transfer Hasan from an unnamed Central Texas hospital to the army's only 'level one' trauma centre in the US.

Access to the Fort Hood base, the largest active duty military training post in US with 50,000 personnel and 150,000 family members and civilians, has been tightly controlled.

Extra guards are now posted at entry gates to military housing developments to block media from entering the base stretches 340 square miles, with an escort.

Amazed and shocked, Army officials are picking up pieces after the tragedy that unfolded when Maj Hasan allegedly walked into a soldier readiness centre at the base killing people frantically in the worst attack against the military by one of its own men in which 12 soldiers and one Defence Department civilian were killed.

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