The crash of a plane with on-board both the Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana when his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira, on 6 april 1994, at around 20.30 hours, is generally regarded as the event that the Rwandan genocide really launched.

25 years later, it is still not clear who the airplane shoot down. Nor is it clear how many Rwandans live in the weeks and months after the crash of the Rwandan presidential plane died: the figures doing the rounds, vary between 500,000 and 1 million Rwandans.

All months for the genocide on the Tutsi in april 1994 began, were all the signals in Rwanda in red. Still shot the international community never really in action to a large disaster to avoid. In October 1990 it was the first clear that in Rwanda thoroughly crooked sat. Then fell to the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) from Uganda and with the support of the then (and current) president Yoweri Museveni the north of Rwanda, with the intention of the regime of Habyarimana to overthrow. After 17 years in power was there, and anyway, what wore out on the leadership of the unity party MRND: there were messages about corruption and human rights violations which mostly Tutsi were victims.

The RPF consisted of Tutsi who years earlier, Rwanda had fled from and the power back in the hands wanted to take. In the months after that raid, it came to a guerrilla war between the Rwandan government forces and the RPF, especially in the inhospitable north of the country.