By mid-July 1994, RPF forces had encircled and were poised to take Kigali, forcing the interim government responsible for orchestrating the genocide of roughly 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu to flee toward Zaire. The collapse marked the beginning of the end for organized genocidal violence, though millions of refugees and killers alike poured across borders in the following days.
By mid-July 1994, the genocide that had begun in early April was entering its final catastrophic days. The Rwandan Patriotic Front, a Tutsi-led rebel force commanded by Paul Kagame, had been steadily advancing across the country while the world largely stood by; a UN peacekeeping force under Roméo Dallaire had been starved of troops and mandate to intervene.
As RPF units closed in on Kigali in mid-July, the interim government and the remnants of the Hutu Power militias that had carried out the killings began a chaotic retreat toward the border with Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hundreds of thousands of civilians, some genuine refugees and others perpetrators fearing reprisal, fled alongside them into vast camps that would soon become breeding grounds for cholera epidemics and further regional violence.
The genocide had claimed an estimated 800,000 lives, mostly Tutsi, in scarcely fourteen weeks, one of the fastest mass killings in modern history. The RPF's military victory ended the organized killing campaign, but the humanitarian catastrophe in the refugee camps, and the political aftershocks across Central Africa, including the wars that would soon engulf Congo, were only beginning.