April 7, 1994

Rwandan genocide

Organized mass killing and political assassinations engulf Kigali

A journey that normally took UN peacekeepers fifteen minutes required three hours: soldiers had blanketed Kigali with barriers before dawn.

The broadcast that never happened

Before dawn on 7 April 1994, military roadblocks across Kigali had grown so extensive that UNAMIR peacekeepers needed about three hours for a fifteen-minute journey.

Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana planned to broadcast an appeal for calm and continued adherence to the Arusha Accords. Rwandan troops attacked her residence and prevented the broadcast; soldiers found and murdered her shortly before noon, along with her husband and two other men.

Fifteen peacekeepers, ten of them killed

Soldiers captured fifteen UNAMIR peacekeepers assigned to protect her. Five Ghanaians were released; ten Belgians were beaten and shot to death at Camp Kigali after resisting for several hours.

Uwilingiyimana's five children survived and were later rescued by the Senegalese UN officer Mbaye Diagne.

Killing by list

Soldiers and police also murdered the opposition figures Félicien Ngango and Landoald Ndasingwa and the Constitutional Court president Joseph Kavaruganda, using prepared lists to locate targets. By midday, forces aligned with Hutu Power had eliminated much of the leadership capable of governing under the constitution or the Arusha transition, while soldiers, police, militia and recruited civilians hunted and killed Tutsi.

RTLM blamed the previous evening's attack on President Habyarimana's plane on the RPF and Belgian UN troops, and broadcast incitement against Tutsi. Late that afternoon RPF troops left their Kigali headquarters and engaged the Presidential Guard.

The United Nations commemorates 7 April as the start of the genocide and Human Rights Watch calls it the day massive killing began, but the boundary is not literal: the Presidential Guard had begun killing civilians on the night of 6 April.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources 2 audit passes Traditional date

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Traditional date. This date is the conventional one, not one fixed by a contemporary record.

What the sources leave uncertain

The United Nations commemorates 7 April as the start of the genocide, and Human Rights Watch labels it the day massive killing began.
The boundary is not literal: the Presidential Guard began killing civilians shortly after the plane crash on the night of 6 April. The genocide was a process, not an event that began at a single documented minute.
The precise overall death toll remains contested. Estimates for genocide victims should not be mixed indiscriminately with combat deaths, RPF killings, refugee-camp deaths or later regional wars.