Following the Rwandan genocide and the victory by the army of the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), many ethnic Hutus, including an unknown number of those who had committed genocide, (Génocidaires) fled from the RPF controlled areas to zones controlled by the French as part of Opération Turquoise and into the neighbouring states of Burundi, Zaire, and Tanzania.

[3] By the third week of February, the OIC had basically stopped working and the camps were filling back up with villagers fleeing the violence in the hills.

In contrast, scholar Gerard Prunier asserts that "the camps sheltered thousands of women and children as well as men who might or might not have been genocidaires."

The former UNREO director would later write, "The government was on board but never fully committed, allowing the humanitarian community to assume responsibility for an 'integrated' approach that in reality never existed.

[6] UNAMIR presence at the camp was maintained by a Zambian infantry company, with medical services provided by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Refugees wishing to leave the camp to return home had to pass through a checkpoint, where genocide survivors would point out individuals who had taken part in the 1994 killings.

Taken by surprise, UNAMIR hastily dispatched 32 Australian soldiers and medical officers to support its presence in Kibeho, on 18 April.

Warfe of the Australian Army would later describe the events of that day: On Tuesday 18 April at 0300 hrs two battalions of RPA soldiers surrounded Kibeho camp.

One woman was shot in the hip and ten people, mostly children, were trampled to death... [The soldiers] torched many of the huts so that the IDPs would not return home.

[7]The Tutsi RPF minister of rehabilitation, Jacques Bihozagara, held a press conference in which he noted, "There are rumours that if the IDPs return home they will be killed...

"[8] In contrast, the Hutu RPF minister of the interior, Seth Sendashonga, rushed to Kibeho the next day to stop the shooting and, upon his return to Kigali, held an emergency meeting of the UN and NGOs to arrange transport for the IDPs before the RPA lost all restraint.

[8] Journalist and eyewitness Linda Polman, who was accompanying the approximately 80 Zambian soldiers from UNAMIR at Kibeho, described the situation that day: [There were] about 150,000[9] refugees standing shoulder to shoulder on a mountain plateau the size of three football fields... For the last sixty hours the refugees had been forced to relieve themselves where they stand or where they have fallen.

[11] One of the Australian medics, Major Carol Vaughan-Evans recalled "I remember getting there four days preceding the massacre and we certainly weren't wanted.

"[6] Not long after 10 am, in heavy rain, RPA forces began firing into the crowd in the hospital compound, causing a stampede of refugees against razor wire and barricades.

Despite this, the medical teams continued their work while the infantry sections brought in wounded to the clearing station and hospital, during breaks in the firing.

"[11] The RPA also directed automatic rounds, rocket propelled grenades and .50 calibre machine gun fire at another wave of IDP who tried to break out after 5.00 pm.

[1][6] However, a series of photos taken by UN Provost Marshal Mark Cuthbert-Brown show some of the extent of the massacre on the morning of 23 April, as Zambian troops commenced moving bodies.

After meeting in Kigali between 3 and 8 May, without any field visits, the commission reached a conclusion backing the government account of events that criminal or genocidaire elements were in the camp and that the massacre had happened when "there had been firing from the IDPs and the RPA suffered casualties...

[17] Those IDPs who were forced to leave the camps were subject to attacks by crowds seeking vengeance for family killed during the genocide, as well as dehydration and exhaustion.

Prunier, attempting to make sense of these numbers, notes that if a low estimate of the pre-crisis Kibeho population (about 80,000) is taken as correct, this still means that at least 20,000 people "vanished."

All age groups and both genders were represented with Defence clinicians working round the clock with limited staff and consumable resources.

[19] Gérard Prunier, author of The Rwanda Crisis and Africa's World War, expresses skepticism of the claims that génocidaires were a significant factor in the massacre and characterizes the Kibeho as being a miniature version of the characteristics of the invasion of Zaire that would occur 18 months later: "nontreatment of the consequences of genocide, well-meaning but politically blind humanitarianism, RPF resolve to 'solve the problem' by force, stunned impotence of the international community in the face of violence, and, finally, a hypocritical denial that anything much had happened.

[20] Johan Pottier argues that the manner in which the RPF government restricted the access of journalists to information about Kibeho foreshadowed its approach in eastern Zaire later.

[22] All available accounts indicate that the small Australian team found the event deeply distressing, and were frustrated both by being unable to encourage many of the IDP to return home before the massacre and being helpless to prevent it once it was underway.