On April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana's plane was shot down by a missile as it landed in Kigali. It is the beginning of the genocide of the Tutsis and moderate Hutus, at the hands of the regular army and the internehamwe, paramilitary militias.
The ideological motive is the racial hatred towards the Tutsi minority, which had constituted the social and cultural elite of the country.
In just 100 days - from 6 April to 16 July - about a million people lost their lives, mostly killed with machetes, axes, spears, clubs.