Nightfall on April 6, 1994, brought an uneasy calm to Kigali. The heat of the day lingered, the city’s usual chorus of voices and radios stilled by a sense of foreboding. Then, without warning, the silence fractured. A distant roar, then a blinding burst of orange ripped across the night sky as President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane, carrying both the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, was struck by a pair of surface-to-air missiles. The explosion lit up the city’s outskirts, raining fiery debris onto the neighborhoods below. For a moment, the city held its breath, the shock of the attack hanging heavy in the humid air.
The news spread with terrifying speed, carried on urgent whispers and crackling radios. In the darkness, preparations that had been months in the making were set into motion. By the time the first pale light of dawn crept over Kigali’s hills, the city had transformed. Makeshift roadblocks—some little more than piles of tires and debris, others reinforced with sandbags and barbed wire—blocked every major artery. Interahamwe militias, many still teenagers, emerged from the shadows. Their faces were hardened by resolve and fear, their hands gripping machetes, nail-studded clubs, and the occasional battered Kalashnikov. Each roadblock became a checkpoint of terror, manned by killers with lists—meticulously prepared rosters of names and addresses.
In neighborhoods like Nyamirambo, fear seeped into every crack and corner. The sun had barely risen when a family, eyes wide with dread, crouched behind a flimsy wooden door. Outside, the scrape of boots grew louder, mingling with the nervous clatter of metal. The unmistakable tang of blood began to drift through the warm morning air, mixing with the scent of diesel and dust. From behind windows and through barely cracked doors, people watched as their neighbors were dragged out into the street, their fates sealed by nothing more than the shape of their nose or the name on their identity card.
Elsewhere in the city, the United Nations peacekeepers—blue helmets visible above sandbagged bunkers—found themselves trapped by their own orders. Their presence was meant to reassure, but now, their hands were tied by restrictive mandates. When ten Belgian soldiers assigned to protect Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana were surrounded, disarmed, and then brutally murdered, it sent a chilling signal. The international community would not intervene. The withdrawal of the Belgian contingent followed swiftly, leaving remaining UN personnel isolated and the civilian population exposed. The killers, emboldened by this abandonment, redoubled their efforts.
For many, the only hope for sanctuary was the church. In Nyamata, hundreds of Tutsi flocked to the local Catholic church, believing its thick stone walls would shield them. But sanctuary turned to slaughter. The attackers arrived with grenades and machetes, forcing open the doors and turning pews into slabs slick with blood. Survivors later spoke of the heavy scent of incense muddled with the stench of death, of screams reverberating off stained glass, and of prayers lost in the chaos. In some cases, clergy members betrayed their flock, pointing out those in hiding; in others, they died alongside the people they sought to protect. No place was safe.
The airwaves became another weapon. Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) broadcast throughout the day and night, its announcers urging listeners to rise up and exterminate the "inyenzi"—the cockroaches. The venomous rhetoric seeped into homes and hearts, twisting fear into hatred. In Gikondo, a Tutsi teacher was dragged from her home in the early morning hours, her children left sobbing as her blood stained the packed earth. The killings were methodical, relentless. City gutters ran red, and the rhythm of violence became as constant as the beating of a drum.
Moderate Hutu politicians, once considered allies, were among the first to fall. Opposition figures were rounded up, imprisoned, and executed, often with a brutal efficiency that left no room for mercy or hesitation. The assassination of Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana created a vacuum that was swiftly filled by extremists, who formed an interim government by force. With chilling calculation, they sanctioned the killings, issuing orders that spread death with bureaucratic precision.
The terror was not confined to the capital. In the countryside, panic turned to pandemonium. Around Kibuye, the placid shores of Lake Kivu became scenes of horror. Families fleeing the violence sought refuge along the water’s edge, only to be hunted down. Bodies floated in the gentle current, while the cries of children were muffled by the crack of gunfire. In muddy fields, the dead and dying lay side by side, the living unable to mourn or bury their dead for fear of being discovered.
Desperation filled the roads leading out of Kigali. Families loaded what little they could carry—blankets, battered suitcases, infants wrapped in cloth—and set out on foot, choking on dust and fear. At every checkpoint, machete-wielding militiamen demanded identity cards. There was no negotiation, no plea for mercy; those marked as Tutsi, or suspected of sympathy, were slaughtered by the roadside. The earth was slick with blood and rain, the ditches filling with bodies as the killing escalated.
The violence spiraled out of control. Even Hutu who refused to participate became targets, marked as traitors by their own kin. Fear fractured communities, pitting neighbor against neighbor and brother against brother. In this chaos, small acts of courage flickered—a mother hiding a neighbor’s child, or a farmer risking his own life to lead a family through the fields at night. But these moments of defiance were rare, quickly drowned by the relentless tide of bloodshed.
By the end of the first week, the genocide had become an all-consuming inferno. The streets of Kigali were choked with smoke, the scent of burning homes mixing with the coppery odor of blood. The world’s gaze remained averted; in New York, diplomats debated the legal definition of genocide as thousands perished each day. The machinery of death was running at a fever pitch, efficient and merciless. To the north, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, hardened by years of war, began to move—preparing to intervene as the nation descended ever deeper into darkness. The nightmare had only just begun.