On the second day of the struggle, Rwigyema was shot in the head and died at Nyabwenshogozi Hill. His death was kept secret for a month so as not to harm morale. There is a dispute about the exact circumstances of Rwigyema's death; the official line of Kagame's government, and the version mentioned by historian Gérard Prunier in his 1995 book on the subject, was that Rwigyema was killed by a stray bullet. In his later book, however, Prunier states that he had established "from incontrovertible evidence (including an interview with an eyewitness to the killing)" that Rwigyema was killed by his subcommander Peter Bayingana, following an argument over tactics, and excused his readers for having accepted the "cooked version of facts [the RPF] provided" him with.