Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana's jet was shot down as it approached Kigali airport, killing him and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira instantly. The assassination, still disputed in its origin, was seized upon by Hutu extremists as pretext to launch a meticulously planned genocide against the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus, beginning within hours.
The Falcon 50 jet, a gift from French President François Mitterrand, was on its final approach to Kigali International Airport around 8:30 in the evening when two missiles struck it, sending the wreckage crashing into the gardens of Habyarimana's own presidential palace. Everyone aboard died, including the crew of French pilots.
Within hours, roadblocks sprang up across Kigali, staffed by Hutu militia known as the Interahamwe working from prepared lists of Tutsi names. The speed and coordination of the killing that followed—beginning that very night with the murder of moderate Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and ten Belgian peacekeepers guarding her—revealed that extremist elements had been planning mass killing for months, merely waiting for a trigger.
Over the following hundred days, an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered, often by machete, in one of the fastest and most efficient genocides in recorded history, while the international community, still scarred by the Somalia intervention, largely stood by. Who actually fired the missiles that killed Habyarimana remains contested between Hutu extremist and RPF rebel theories to this day, but the consequence was unmistakable and catastrophic.
Key people: Juvénal Habyarimana, Cyprien Ntaryamira, Agathe Uwilingiyimana