The assassination of Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana on the night of April 6, 1994 triggered the rampage by Hutu extremists and the "Interahamwe" militia.
Rwanda's President Paul Kagame on Sunday, April 7, said the international community "failed" his country during the 1994 genocide.
This is as the Rwandan leader paid tribute to victims 30 years after Hutu extremists tore apart the nation, according to a report by Le Monde with AFP.
"Rwanda was completely humbled by the magnitude of our loss. And the lessons we learned are engraved in blood," Kagame said in Kigali during a solemn ceremony to commemorate a 100-day massacre that claimed the lives of 800,000 people, largely Tutsis but also moderate Hutus.
The assassination of Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana on the night of April 6, 1994 triggered the rampage by Hutu extremists and the "Interahamwe" militia.
Their victims were shot, beaten or hacked to death in killings fueled by vicious anti-Tutsi propaganda broadcast on TV and radio. At least 250,000 women were raped, according to UN figures. Each year new mass graves are uncovered around the country.
"It was the international community which failed all of us, whether from contempt or cowardice," Kagame said on Sunday, addressing an audience that included several African heads of state and former US president Bill Clinton, who had called the genocide the biggest failure of his administration.
In keeping with tradition, the ceremonies on April 7 – the day Hutu militias unleashed the carnage in 1994 – began with Kagame placing wreathes on mass graves and lighting a remembrance flame at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where more than 250,000 victims are believed to be buried.
The tiny nation has since found its footing under the iron-fisted rule of Kagame, who led the rebel militia which ended the genocide, but the scars of the violence remain, leaving a trail of destruction across Africa's Great Lakes region.
The international community's failure to intervene has been a cause of lingering shame, with French President Emmanuel Macron expected to release a message on Sunday saying France and its Western and African allies "could have stopped" the bloodshed but lacked the will to do so.
African Union chief Moussa Faki Mahamat said in Kigali that "no one, not even the African Union, can exonerate themselves from their inaction... Let us have the courage to recognise it, and take responsibility for it."
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné and Israel's President Isaac Herzog were among the visiting dignitaries.
Rwandans will also stage a march and hold a candlelit vigil in the capital for those killed in the slaughter. Sunday's events mark the start of a week of national mourning, with Rwanda effectively coming to a standstill and national flags flown at half-mast. Music will not be allowed in public places or on the radio, while sports events and movies are banned from TV broadcasts, unless connected to what has been dubbed "Kwibuka (Remembrance) 30".
According to Rwanda, hundreds of genocide suspects remain at large, including in neighbouring nations such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda. Only 28 have been extradited to Rwanda from around the world.
France, one of the top destinations for Rwandans fleeing justice at home, has tried and convicted half a dozen people over their involvement in the killings. The French government had been a long-standing backer of Habyarimana's regime, leading to decades of tensions between the two countries.
In 2021, Macron acknowledged France's role in the genocide and its refusal to heed warnings of looming massacres but stopped short of an official apology.
Rwanda's much larger neighbour the DRC did not send a representative to Sunday's ceremonies. Relations between the two countries have sharply worsened in recent years, with Kigali denying allegations that it is arming Tutsi-led M23 rebels in the eastern DRC, and accusing Kinshasa of hosting a Hutu-led militia hostile to Rwanda.