Timeline

RPF forces capture Ruhengeri, an important bastion of the genocide regime, and liberate a few survivors. People flee into the French “safe zone” at an estimated rate of 6,000 per hour, including militia, soldiers and officials of the Interim Government. An estimated one million Hutus begin fleeing towards Zaire.

Radio Muhabura reports that at Kiruhura parish in Butare, RPF soldiers rescue 24 nuns, including two Belgians who were injured by the fleeing Government forces. They also rescued 300 nuns and about 100 orphans from another parish in Butare. Two of the rescued nuns report that Government troops stole about 300 million Rwandan Francs ($440,000 USD) from the parish. The French-led “Operation Turquoise” establishes a “safe zone” in the prefectures of Gikongoro, Cyangugu, and Kibuye. As the RPF advances westward, the influx of displaced persons into the zone increases from an initial 500,000 to an estimated one million people. The French Committee for the Defense of Human Rights and Democracy in Rwanda and Médecins Sans Frontières say that “France is protecting those behind the massacres” in Rwanda.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe officially announces the boundaries of “Operation Turquoise” in Gikongoro, Cyangugu, and Kibuye. RPF troops and the Turquoise forces exchange fire as the RPF advances toward Gikongoro. As the RPF prepares to take Butare, French troops evacuate more than 1,000 people by convoy toward Burundi and Bukavu, Zaire.

Commander Marin Gillier, leading the Turquoise Omar detachment,arrives at Bisesero and finds many massacre sites there as well as 800 to 1,000 survivors. In the three-day interval after they were discovered by the Diego detachment and before the Omar detachment got them out of harm’s way, about 1,000 survivors from Bisesero were massacred under the leadership of Charles Sikubwabo, the mayor of Gishyita. This three- day delay has never been accounted for.

Two nuns from Kibuye alert Lieutenant-Colonel Duval, the commander of a Turquoise detachment headed toward the Bisesero Hills in the commune of Gishyita, that Tutsi refugees were under threat of extermination in the hills where they had taken refuge. The detachment comes across some of the first survivors north of this area. Duval judges that he has insufficient means to secure the area and tells the survivors he is returning to Kibuye, promising them that he would come back as soon as possible.