Interahamwe

The Interahamwe (pronounced Een-tair-ah-hahm-way, with the 't' pronounced as an 'h') was the main mob army that started the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. In this mass murder, about one million Hutu and Tutsi people were killed.

Methods

The Interahamwe usually used machetes ('mupanga') to do the killing, but guns, grenades and primitive tools like nail-studded clubs and hoes were also used.

Beginning

About a half an hour after the President of Rwanda, Juvénal Habyarimana, was killed on the night of April 6, 1994, Interahamwe roadblocks were put up all over the city of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. The violence that followed would last about 100 days. This resulted in at least 500,000 deaths, but some say even up to 800,000-1,000,000 deaths.