By 20 February the RPF had advanced to within of the capital, Kigali, and many observers believed an assault on the city was imminent. The assault did not take place, and the RPF instead declared a cease-fire. Whether or not the RPF intended to advance on the capital is unknown. Kagame later said his aim at this point was to inflict as much damage as possible on Rwandan Army forces, capture their weapons, and gain ground slowly, but not to attack the capital or seek to end the war with an outright RPF victory. Kagame told journalist and author Stephen Kinzer such a victory would have ended international goodwill towards the RPF and led to charges that the war had simply been a bid to replace the Hutu state with a Tutsi one. The increased presence of French troops and the fierce loyalty of the Hutu population to the government meant an invasion of Kigali would not have been achieved with the same ease that the RPF had conquered the north. Fighting for the capital would have been a much more difficult and dangerous operation. Several of Kagame's senior officers urged him to go for outright victory but he overruled them. By the end of the February war more than a million civilians, mostly Hutu, had left their homes in the country's largest exodus to date.