Gikondo massacre International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Gikondo massacre The Gikondo massacre was the mass murder of about 110 people of Tutsi identity, including children, who sheltered in a Polish Pallottine mission church in , Kigali. The massacre took place on April 9, 1994 and was executed by Interahamwe militia under supervision of the Hutu presidential guard. The massacre was the first absolute proof of a genocide discovered by UNAMIR during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. The Rwandan Genocide began on April 6, 1994, after the plane carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the president of Burundi on board was
History of Rwanda dominated by the majority Hutu under President Grégoire Kayibanda. Unsettled ethnic and political tensions were worsened when Juvénal Habyarimana, who was also Hutu, seized power in 1973. In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group composed of 10,000 Tutsi refugees from previous decades of unrest, invaded the country, starting the Rwandan Civil War. The war ground on, worsening ethnic tensions, as the Hutu feared losing their gains. The assassination of Habyarimana was the catalyst for the eruption of the 1994 genocide, in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and some moderate Hutus were killed. The Tutsi RPF conquered