His many assignments have numbered Kosovo, where he was during the NATO invasion of the country; former Yugoslavia where he covered the 1996 refugee crisis; Moscow during President Yeltsin's attempt to put down the uprising in Chechnya; and Rwanda where he reported on the Central African Republic 's genocidal civil war. As the only television journalist left in the capital Kigali in 1994, Mates watched the city fall to the rebel army of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. He also reported on the slaughter of countless soldiers and civilians and the plight of the 700,000 refugees who fled the carnage. ITV News won a BAFTA for its coverage of the genocide.