Assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira
On the evening of 6 April 1994, the aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira, both Hutu, was shot down with surface-to-air missiles as their jet prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda; both were killed. The assassination set in motion the Rwandan genocide, one of the bloodiest events of the late 20th century.
A Dassault Falcon 50 similar to the one involved in the assassination
Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana in 1980
Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira in 1993
Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is highly elevated, giving it the soubriquet "land of a thousand hills", with its geography dominated by mountains in the west and savanna to the southeast, with numerous lakes throughout the country. The climate is temperate to subtropical, with two rainy seasons and two dry seasons each year. It is the most densely populated mainland African country; among countries larger than 10,000 km2, it is the fifth most densely populated country in the world. Its capital and largest city is Kigali.
A reconstruction of the ancient King's Palace at Nyanza
Juvénal Habyarimana, president from 1973 to 1994
Human skulls at the Nyamata Genocide Memorial
Rwandan President Paul Kagame