On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and president Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, both men Hutu, was downed by a rocket attack. Almost immediately members of the presidential guard began killing Tutsi civilians in retribution near the airport in Kigali. Roadblocks set up by Hutu militiamen helped the gendarmerie identify Tutsis.
For the next 100 days a massacre of the Tutsi ethnic minority unfolded that ended only after a rebel militia led by Tutsi commander Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s current president, entered the capital.
According to the UN, more than 800,000 people are thought to have been killed and an estimated 150,000 to 250,000 women were raped.
Of the dead around 300,000 were children while more than 95,000 other children were orphaned.