Hutu by the Interahamwe – militias supported by politicians and other key figures who were part of the Hutu Power movement. The movement recruited and pressured Hutu civilians to arm themselves with machetes, clubs, blunt objects, and other weapons and encouraged them to rape, maim, and kill their Tutsi neighbors and to destroy or steal their property. The RPF restarted its offensive soon after Habyarimana's assassination. It rapidly seized control of the northern part of the country and captured Kigali about 100 days later in mid-July, bringing an end to the genocide. The overall death toll of the Genocide is disputed, but most scholars estimate between 500,000 and 800,000 Tutsi deaths, and up to 1.1 million overall deaths. Early warnings Before the killings began, several warnings made to UN peacekeepers and international observers went unheeded. As Rwanda expert Alison Des Forges put it, in her report for Human Rights Watch, "the preparations for violence took place in full view of a U.N. peacekeeping force". The most infamous warning came on on 11 January 1994, General Roméo Dallaire, commander of UNAMIR, sent his "Genocide Fax" to UN Headquarters. The fax stated that Dallaire was in contact with "a top level trainer in the cadre of Interhamwe-armed [sic] militia of MRND." The informant—now known to be Mathieu Ngirumpatse's chauffeur, Kassim Turatsinze, a.k.a. "Jean-Pierre"—claimed to have been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali. According to the memo, Turatsinze suspected that a genocide against the Tutsis was being planned, and he said that "in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1000 Tutsis". Following this, Dallaire sent further warnings, and pleas for action from the Security Council, five times: January 22, February 3, February 15, February 27 and March 13. Dallaire's reports were widely ignored by key officials, and his requests for a broader interpretation of the mandate and for troop reinforcements were all rejected. His request to raid weapons caches, the locations of which had been revealed by his informant, was turned down by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), which felt that Dallaire was exceeding his mandate and had to be kept "on a leash". Officials from within the UN Secretariat have testified that there was a concerted effort to minimise reports of imminent tragedy in Rwanda by the office of Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Michael Barnett, who was a senior official at the UN at that time, has