Tutsi which the Hutu then in power killed an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 people, largely of Tutsi origin. Victorious in the aftermath of the genocide, the RPF came to power in July 1994. Tutsis speak Rwanda-Rundi as their native language. It is a member of the Bantu subgroup of the Niger–Congo family. Rwanda-Rundi is subdivided into the Kinyarwanda and Kirundi dialects, which have been standardized as official languages of Burundi and Rwanda. Rwanda-Rundi is also spoken as a mother tongue by the Hutu and Twa. Additionally, many Tutsis speak French, the third official language of Rwanda and Burundi, as a lingua franca. The
Islam in Rwanda against the soldiers and militia of the "Interahamwe". Only once the soldiers attacked with machine gun fire were the "Interahamwe" able to enter the mosque and kill the refugees. The number of Rwandan Muslims increased after the 1994 genocide due to large numbers of conversions. Many Muslims had sheltered refugees, both Hutu and Tutsi. Some converts state that they converted to Islam because of the role that some Catholic and Protestant leaders played in the genocide. Human-rights groups have documented both incidents in which Christian clerics permitted Tutsis to seek refuge in churches, then surrendered them to Hutu death-squads, as