PARIS — Bullets flew. Then men with machetes and clubs burst into a convent where people had found refuge, killing almost all the boys and men.
Angélique Uwamahoro was 13 at the time of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. She said she had to walk through the bodies to survive.
Three decades later, she told her story on Tuesday at a Paris court where a former doctor is on trial for his alleged role in the mass killings of more than 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus who tried to protect them.
The dead included some of Uwamahoro's family members. She said she came to court to ''seek justice for my people, who died for who they were.''
The accused is Eugène Rwamucyo, a 65-year-old former doctor who is charged with genocide, complicity, crimes against humanity and conspiring to prepare those crimes. He has denied any wrongdoing.
If found guilty in the trial that started this month and is scheduled to end next week, Rwamucyo is facing life in prison.
Several witnesses traveled to Paris and gave graphic descriptions of the killings in the Butare region where Rwamucyo was at the time.
On Monday, another survivor, Immaculée Mukampunga, described attacks on Tutsi civilians who had gathered at a seminary. ''They attacked us, using the same method: first the machete on top of the head, then the throat, then the ankles," she said.