Kukes is an ugly town set amidst beautiful mountains, between Albania and Kosovo. It's at the end of a road full of pit-holes, mud and bends, bordered by cliffs and with water pelting down the slopes. View of Kukes It's two hundred kilometres from Durazzo, a fourteen-hour journey for a convoy. The Morini border, from where the refugees who manage to escape from the violence of the mobs of soldiers arrive with their eyes brimming with terror, is just nine kilometres from the town as the crow flies. The Kukes basin is a sack which Milosevich strategically exploits to flood this corner of Albania with refugees, to exacerbate the difficulties of the humanitarian aid system, and to obstruct the movements of any eventual NATO overland forces. This is where the ANA Civil Defence has set up two camps, "Kukes One" and "Kukes Two". The first is located in the area of the old copper mine, overlooked by the chimney which soars above the plain, at the outlet of the gorge from where the refugees arrive. There are about four hundred tents which the advance help column erected in record time, out of nothing and in the middle of nowhere, to give shelter to those escaping from Kosovo. The second camp is further back, on the hill overlooking the plain on the edge of the town, where we can still make out the white patches of the tents set up by the Greeks.

REFUGEES FROM KOSOVO E-mail: kosovo@catpress.com Special report by