A court in Rwanda has sentenced to death a senior academic convicted of taking part in the genocide of 1994 in which up to a million people were killed.

The court heard that Dr Geoffrey Gatera used his position as the Dean of the medical faculty at Butare University to oversee the killings of hundreds of Tutsis.

Many of the victims had taken refuge at the university hospital, where Dr Gatera was chief surgeon.

The BBC correspondent in Rwanda says a large number of university staff and medical personnel were implicated in the genocide, but Dr Gatera is the most senior to have been prosecuted.

A total of about one hundred Rwandans have been sentenced to death for involvement in the killings.

Twenty-two were executed in April.