On this day 24 years ago...
Apr 07, 2018
In approximately three months, the Hutu extremists who controlled Rwanda brutally murdered an estimated 500,000 to 1 million civilian Tutsis
PIC: Some 90,000 Rwandan refugees wait to get food from the Red Cross, in May 1994, at a refugee camp in Tanzania. (Credit: AFP)
TODAY IN HISTORY
April 7, 1994
On this day in 1994, Rwandan armed forces killed 10 Belgian peacekeeping officers in a successful effort to discourage international intervention in the genocide that had begun only hours earlier. In approximately three months, the Hutu extremists who controlled Rwanda brutally murdered an estimated 500,000 to 1 million civilian Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the worst episode of ethnic genocide since World War II.
The immediate roots of the 1994 genocide dated back to the early 1990s, when President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, began using anti-Tutsi rhetoric to consolidate his power among the Hutus.