In just 100 days in 1994 , about 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda by ethnic Hutu extremists .They were targeting members of the minority Tutsi community, as well as their political opponents , irrespective of their ethnic origin .
How was the Genocide Started ?
About 85% of Rwandans are Hutus but the Tutsi minority has long dominated the country. In 1959, the Hutus overthrew the Tutsi monarchy and tens of thousands of Tutsis fled to neighbouring countries including Uganda .
A group of Tutsi exiles formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front which invaded Rwanda in 1990 and fighting continued until a 1993 peace deal was agreed.
On the night of 6 April 1994 a plane carrying then-President Juvenal Habyarimana, and his counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi - both Hutus - was shot down, killing everyone on board.
At the time,National ID cards had people's ethnic group on them, so militias set up roadblocks where Tutsis were slaughtered, often with machetes which most Rwandans kept around the house .
Did anyone try to stop that Genocide ?
The United Nation and Belgium had deployed forces in Rwanda but the UN mission was not given a mandate to stop the killing.
How did massacre end ?
The well-organised Rwandan Patriotic Front backed by Uganda's army, gradually seized more territory, until 4 July 1994, when its forces marched into the Rwandan capital, Kigali.
Some two million Hutus - both civilians and some of those involved in the massacre- then fled across the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo, at the time called Zaire, fearing revenge attacks. Others went to neighbouring Tanzania and Burundi.
Human rights groups say RPF fighters killed thousands of Hutu civilians as they took power - and more after they went into DR Congo to pursue the Interahamwe.
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