Rwanda genocide bodies reburied

Rwandans reburied the bodies of more than 20,000 victims of the 1994 genocide who had been dumped in mass graves as the country marked the 11th anniversary of the massacre.

The reburials were a gesture meant to restore dignity to the victims of the genocide in which more than half a million died in a killing frenzy. Rwandans marked the massacre with a week of mourning.

The genocide started hours after the president’s plane was mysteriously shot down over Kigali on April 6, 1994. The next day Hutu militiamen began hunting down Tutsis and moderate Hutus and killing them.

The top military leaders of President Juvenal Habyarimana’s government put into action a plan to kill all the remaining Tutsis in the country of seven million. Tutsis made up an estimated 14% of the population.