violence towards Tutsis. On 6 April 1994, a plane containing President Habyarimana (and others, including Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira) was shot down as it approached the Kigali Airport for landing. Everyone on board was killed. 'Hutu Power' extremists within the government and local militias blamed this event on the Tutsi, and consequently, the Rwandan genocide started on 6 April 1994. Interahamwe militias consulted their lists and began searching the city for Tutsis and Tutsi 'sympathisers' to murder. Though Rusesabagina was Hutu (as his father was Hutu and his mother Tutsi), his wife Tatiana was a Tutsi and his children considered mixed – meaning that his family was under considerable threat. Providing shelter When the violence broke out, soldiers came to Rusesabagina's house, asking him to open the Hôtel Diplomates, which the interim Hutu government used as a headquarters. Rusesabagina bribed the soldiers with money from the hotel safe to ensure safe passage for his family. When the government evacuated the hotel, on account of RPF shelling, Rusesabagina arrived at the Hôtel des Mille Collines. Upon arrival, Rusesabagina promptly phoned the hotel's corporate owners, Sabena, imploring them to put him in charge as the acting general manager of the Mille Collines. They sent through a fax, and he assumed control of the hotel from the staff who had been running it since the killings begun. Despite Rusesabagina's claims that Romeo Dallaire 'rescinded' an order for UN protection of the hotel, there was in fact, a strong UN peacekeeping presence at the Hotel, including Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese military observer who was ferrying threatened Tutsis into the Hotel. General Dallaire – in charge of the UN deployment, and his deputy, Brent Beardsley, were also often at the hotel, ensuring its safety from killings. Rusesabagina sheltered approximately twelve hundred people during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. One radio reporter said: “Nobody had been killed, injured, beaten, tortured, expelled or retrieved from the hotel during the whole time we were refugees. Paul Rusesabagina managed to do the impossible to save our lives at the moment when others were massacring their own children, their own wives.” Family impact On 3 May, Rusesabagina ensured that his wife and children fled safely in a truck past the militia's roadblocks. The truck set out for Kigali airport so they could flee to Belgium. He remained in the hotel. Tatiana and her children were specifically targeted within the convoy