Charles Petrie, deputy coordinator of the U.N. Rwanda Emergency Office said: "I don't think 1 million would be an exaggerated figure." Petrie's estimate was backed by a senior aid worker who said his organization had put the deaths, mainly from massacres of minority Tutsis and moderate Hutu government opponents, at about 1.5 million. He declined to be identified.
The previous estimate for the loss of life had been 500,000, a figure given by the International Committee of the Red Cross last May, only weeks after the start of the carnage, which began with the April 6 killing of Hutu strongman Major-General Juvenal Habyarimana.
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