The massacres in Rwanda of as many as a million Tutsis by the Hutu majority was apparently triggered off by the shooting down (probably by provocateurs) of President Habyarimana's plane in April 1994, but they had a long ancestry notably the killings which followed the declaration of Rwanda's independence from Belgium in 1962. Fergal Keane's mission took him to the country when the massacres were still fresh, and looked as if they would soon be followed by others. He recorded harrowing sights and stories, and saw few signs of remorse at official level; and he has no doubts that it was genocide in the true sense, not merely "tribal warfare".