The falls gained international fame during the 1994 Rwandan genocide , as thousands of dead bodies flowed underneath the Rusomo Bridge while a simultaneous stream of refugees crossed over it , fleeing into Tanzania to escape the slaughter . This was one of the first mass outflows of the Great Lakes refugee crisis . The Kagera drains water from all areas of Rwanda except the far west , and consequently carried all the corpses which had been discarded into rivers nationwide . This led to a state of emergency being declared in areas around the shore of Lake Victoria in Uganda , where these bodies eventually washed up
Rwandan genocide
Rwandan genocide
Rusumo Falls