July 1994 Gitarama Roadblocks
“Towards the end of the war of 1994, [2nd week of July 1994] the 59th battalion of Paul Kagame’s RPA had established its headquarters in Gitarama, close to UNAMIR positions and opposite the French operation Zone Turquoise. The battalion set up barriers by which the population returning from the Turquoise Zone had to pass through. This population was screened at the barriers. The majority was killed only because they were Hutu. The soldiers in charge of this task were divided into six groups of eight men chosen exclusively from the Tutsi ethnic group of the RPA. They killed their victims with agafuni.
The slowest teams killed between 20 and 30 persons per night, but the specialists of agafuni could kill 100 per night. Towards the end, the victims were to dig their grave before being killed. This work lasted four to five weeks, day and night. Other people, Hutu intellectuals and ex-FAR (soldiers with the Rwandan Armed Forces from the former Hutu regime of Habyarimana) preferred not to cross the RPA barrier and established a camp near UNAMIR position. With the refusal of UNAMIR to dismantle the camp, the [RPA’s] 59th battalion attacked this refugee camp. The RPA soldiers shot at the occupants without any distinction. The number of victims of this carnage was evaluated at between 2,000 and 3,000 according to the witness who used to be an RPA soldier and who participated in the attack” by ICTR investigators in their Top Secret Summary Report*
From Rever, J., 2018. In Praise of Blood, The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada.