In some places, RPF forces killed civilians at meetings organized soon after their arrival in the community, a practice which gave rise to the bitter joke that kwitaba Imana, meaning to die, had come to mean the same as kwitaba inama, to attend a meeting.
In Gishara on April 13, RPF soldiers invited the people to join a hunt to kill hippopotamus and enjoy a feast. After having questioned a few men about whether anyone in the crowd was a soldier or knew how to handle a gun, RPF troops launched grenades and shot into the crowd. Witnesses reported that they were attacked by RPF soldiers several days later in nearby Nyabwishongezi after having been called to a pacification meeting. Other residents of the same area related that family members or neighbours had been attacked by RPF soldiers who entered their houses and confiscated their identity papers before killing them.
In several communities in Kibungo, people were promised food or salt if they would assemble as instructed. They were then attacked by soldiers. Twenty-two persons were reported killed near Rwamagana with others slain at Kayonza and Gahini. Witnesses declared that on June 5 in the Nteko sector, Mugina commune, Gitarama prefecture, RPF soldiers killed six men with old hoes and left their bodies in the woods at Cyumura. A week or so later, RPF forces surrounded and killed a group of civilians who had fled from the town of Gitarama to the hill of Muhanga at Gisoro. On June 20 and 23 and again on July 10, RPF soldiers reportedly attacked and each time killed some twenty people in Mugina sector of Mugina commune in Gitarama prefecture.
In late July or early August, after thousands of people who had fled to the Zone Turquoise returned to Nyamabuye commune in Gitarama prefecture, the RPF was said to have summoned people living in or near the cell Kigarama to a meeting at Gatenzi. Witnesses declare that they were given salt and matches and were told that the meeting had been postponed until a larger number of people could gather. When the meeting was convoked again, dozens of more people came. According to the witnesses, the men were tied up and taken to be killed with old hoes in the house of Rwamigabo. The women were slain in the house of Ntawugashira and the children were killed in the house of an old woman named Marguerite and then the house was burned.
(From the Book: Leave None to Tell the Story – Genocide in Rwanda, by Alison Desforges, Human Right Watch, March 1999 )