Rwanda: "Never will our people be left for dead again"- Kagame

Rwanda President Paul Kagame said, Sunday, his country would never again experience what happened in the 1994 genocide. Speaking on the 30th anniversary of the genocide against the country's Tutsis, Kagame emphatically stated "Never will our people be left for dead again."

He was speaking during a commemoration ceremony at the BK Arena.

While squarely pointing a finger at the Western countries' inaction to avert or stop the genocide, Kagame praised the African countries that came to Rwanda's support.

"Those soldiers did not fail Rwanda, it was the international community which failed all of us, whether from contempt or cowardice," he said.

Foreign visitors at the ceremony included the leaders of South Africa, Congo, Ethiopia, Central African Republic and Tanzania, as well as Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Former US and French presidents Bill Clinton and Nicolas Sarkozy also attended.

The killings were ignited when a plane carrying then-President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down over Kigali.

The Tutsis, blamed for downing the plane and killing the president, were then targeted by extremist Hutu in massacres that lasted over 100 days in 1994.

Some moderate Hutus who tried to protect members of the Tutsi minority were also killed. 

An estimated 800,000 people were killed.