On April 15th 1994, genocide broke out in the village of Nyarubue in Rwanda. The bodies of Tutsis massacred by Hutu militias were scattered around the Nyamata Catholic Church.

　　On April 15th 1994, genocide broke out in the village of Nyarubue in Rwanda. The bodies of Tutsis massacred by Hutu militias were scattered around the Nyamata Catholic Church.

　　When the Belgian army and administrators, who had governed Rwanda since 1922, withdrew on April 7th 1944, Hutu leaders took control of Rwanda. There were attacks on the Tutsi, and some Tutsi fled across the border into Uganda, forming guerrilla units and aiming to retake power. In the summer of 1996, Tutsi guerrilla forces swept from Zaire to the capital. Mobutu's Hutu army collapsed and fled the country. Kabila took control of the country and renamed it the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In a war called the All-African Alliance, the government of the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was replaced.

　　On April 6th 1994, the plane of the Hutu president was shot down and he was killed. For several months, young Hutu villagers had joined armed militia groups and armed themselves with spears and machetes. In other parts of the country, Hutu groups began killing Tutsis.

　　Flora Mukampole's husband asked the village chief of Nyarubuye for protection, but the chief refused and told them to seek refuge in the church. Eventually, 3,000 Tutsis gathered around the church seeking refuge. Some of the men were armed with bows and arrows and spears, but it was to no avail. On April 15th 1994, when the Hutu militia attacked the church, the village mayor, who was leading the attack, ordered the Hutu government soldiers and police to use guns and grenades against the Tutsis. The Tutsis panicked and fled, and the Hutu militiamen chased them with machetes and killed the Tutsis. The Tutsi people were hacked to pieces, and the dead and injured lay in heaps.

　　Flora Mukampole, who had been hit on the head with a machete, lay among the heaps of bodies. The Hutu militiamen hunted down the surviving Tutsis and killed them. She lay there motionless for several days, not leaving the church grounds. The church was filled with corpses. She stayed with the children, surrounded by thousands of decomposing bodies, and after a week, Tutsi rebel soldiers arrived at the church and took her to a hospital.