After the RPF, led by Paul Kagame, fought its way into Kigali, the interim government responsible for orchestrating the genocide against Tutsi and moderate Hutu fled the country. The rebel victory halted the mass killing but came too late for hundreds of thousands already dead, and it triggered a massive refugee crisis as millions of Hutu fled into neighboring Zaire.
The genocide had begun in April 1994 within hours of President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane being shot down, unleashing a meticulously planned campaign of slaughter carried out largely with machetes by ordinary citizens whipped into violence by radio broadcasts and local militia leaders. International forces, including a UN peacekeeping mission, largely stood aside as the killing accelerated, a failure that still haunts global institutions.
The RPF, a rebel force largely composed of Tutsi refugees who had fled earlier waves of violence, had been fighting a civil war since 1990. As the genocide unfolded, RPF units under Paul Kagame advanced steadily, capturing territory town by town even as they raced against the killing itself. Their capture of Kigali on July 4 marked the effective collapse of the genocidal government.
The human toll was staggering: roughly 800,000 Rwandans, overwhelmingly Tutsi, killed in about one hundred days, one of the fastest mass killings in recorded history. The RPF victory ended the genocide but did not end the suffering; over a million Hutu, including many implicated in the killings, fled into refugee camps in Zaire, sowing the seeds of a regional conflict that would eventually draw in half a dozen African nations.