They are far from home and there has been no talk of prisoner exchanges in a war that shows no sign of easing. But many of the POWs can count themselves lucky even to have made it this far.

As the death toll continues to soar in fierce fighting along the disputed border with Ethiopia, these Eritrean prisoners appeared on Thursday to be safe and fairly well looked after.

Tank gunner Samson Werede, 28, has had one leg amputated but it could have been much worse -- he was captured on March 25 when his tank was hit by an Ethiopian rocket.

``I was considered dead and left behind by my comrades. The Ethiopian forces overran the Shelalo front on March 25, plucked me out of the burning tank and took me to a field hospital where I recieved treatment,'' he told reporters visiting the POW camp.

A former fighter in Eritrea's independence struggle against Ethiopia, he is now being treated by Ethiopian doctors for the deep wounds on his remaining leg. Outside, other Eritrean POWs played volleyball on two dusty courts and, in a separate section, captured women soldiers braided each other's hair, chatted, sang or listened to radios.

Other prisoners wounded in the border war that raged for one month last year and flared up again in February lay on mattresses scattered across the cement floor of a large hall.

The camp, situated in Ethiopia's norther region of Tigray, is now home to at least 300 Eritrean prisoners, including at least 40 women, the POWs said.

One of them, 23-year-old Izgiamen Tesfa Mariam, shyly tried to cover her swollen belly as she explained she was five months pregnant. She said she was already carrying her child when she was called up for military service but had no complaints because her boyfriend had also been conscripted.

But Ethiopian troops captured her in the key border region of Badme in February and she has no idea where her lover is.

``I was captured when our trench was overrun by Ethiopian troops. I do not know if my friend is still alive or dead,'' she told Reuters.

Yemane Seyoum, the Ethiopian camp coordinator, declined to say how many Eritrean POWs were being held in the camp. But he said they were provided with three meals a day, medical services and blankets, and the women were given separate dormitories.

``Although the budget for the POWs is an added burden on the country, it is our responsibility to treat these people as humanely as possible,'' he said, adding that the camp was run with a government budget set at around $25 per month for wounded soldiers and $17 per month for healthy ones. ``The ration is similar to what and Ethiopian soldier is provided with,'' Yemane said.

The Ethiopian-Eritrean war has combined modern military technology with trench warfare, leading to massive casualties.

Although widely seen as regional allies before the war broke out in May 1998, both sides now claim triumphantly to have killed tens of thousands of enemy troops while refusing all comment on their own losses.

All diplomatic efforts to end the war, or at least win a ceasefire, have failed. Both sides accuse each other of starting the conflict and insist their own populations are fully behind the war effort.

Eritrea was committed to resolving the border conflict peacefully but its people were just as committed, if necessary, to defend the country's territory, Foreign Minister Haile Woldensae said in an interview with reporters.

``It (the war) it is something that has been forced on us and we have to pay the sacrifices. ``People are sending their one remaining son or daughter to the front when they have lost their (other) children in the liberation struggle,'' he said, adding that the war could at present be Africa's most bloody.

The Horn of Africa conflict has raged intermittently since last May, fought on three fronts along a barren frontier. The immediate cause was Eritrea's seizure of two sections of disputed border land, but each side also accuses the other of supporting opposition movements and ill-treating its nationals.

Eritrea welcomed a U.N. Security Council declaration on Wednesday deploring the conflict and calling on both sides to stop fighting and feed their people, who are among the world's poorest. But Haile blamed the war squarely on Ethiopia.

``What can we do? From the beginning Eritrea has committed itself to a peaceful solution of the problem...The Ethiopians are not ready for a ceasefire or to...sign a binding acceptance agreement, so this has become a stumbling block,'' he said.

The human cost is impossible to assess accurately as both sides have restricted access by journalists to the frontlines and put out a barrage of claims and counter claims that have proved difficult to verify.

But it appears probable that tens of thousands of soldiers have been slaughtered in artillery bombardments and waves of World War One-style attacks across front line trenches.

Eritrea says 18,000 Ethiopian troops have been killed, wounded or captured in the last 10 days alone, four MiG-23s destroyed and Ethiopian heavy weapons lost. Ethiopia says it has inflicted over 24,000 casualties during that period. Neither side has released its own casualty figures.

Diplomatic efforts led by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and supported by envoys from the United States and other countries to end the war have proved fruitless. One issue complicating diplomacy is that both states say they accept the OAU plan -- even as the war rages on.

The pro-government Alwan newspaper said a Sudanese-Eritrean military and security committee would meet next week in Asmara. A political committee and an economic and trade committee would meet in Khartoum on July 20.

The daily quoted Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail as saying he would lead the Sudanese side at a meeting of a higher ministerial committee in Asmara on August 20.

Ismail and his Eritrean counterpart Haile Woldensae signed an agreement on June 14 in the Qatari capital Doha to form joint committees to tackle obstacles to normalisation. That accord followed a reconcilation pact signed by Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki in Doha in May.

Sudan has long accused Eritrea of backing rebels fighting the Islamist government in Khartoum. Eritrea broke diplomatic ties in 1994, saying Sudan was supporting Moslem militants.

"The members of the council deplore the continuation of hostilities ... and demand that both parties immediately and unconditionally agree to a ceasefire," council President Baboucarr-Blaise Jagne of Gambia said in a statement after a closed-door briefing on the conflict.

Noting that half a million people had been displaced and several million faced serious drought in both countries, council members reminded both government it was "their primary responsibility to feed their peoples."

"The fact that they continue to purchase weapons when large numbers of their populations are facing famine is a matter of great concern to the council," the statement added.

It strongly urged all states to halt immediately the sale of arms and munitions to Ethiopia and Eritrea, as called for in a February council resolution that also demanded the end of hostilities, particularly air strikes.

War between the two former Horn of Africa allies broke out in May last year and has since raged intermittently, with heavy casualties from trench warfare fought across fixed front lines.

Security Council members said an Organization of African Unity (OAU) framework agreement remained a viable and sound basis for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. It encouraged the OAU to intensify its efforts and called on the two sides to cooperate fully and constructively with a high-level OAU delegation to implement the agreement.

Regional conflicts including a year-old war between Ethiopia and Eritrea and chronic armed anarchy in Somalia are likely to exacerbate shortages in a region familiar with hunger, WFP said.

``There is a looming crisis ahead,'' WFP spokeswoman Lindsey Davies told Reuters. ``The only thing that could possibly salvage the situation is a spate of abnormal and unseasonal rains, which our experts say is highly unlikely. ``It would be safe to say that we are seeing an impending crisis that we haven't seen in recent years,'' she said.

Ethiopia's ``belg'' rains in the northern highlands, withered by famine in 1984, failed and the WFP has approved a $40.5 million emergency operation for 1.2 million people in eight drought-stricken regions of Ethiopia.

Somalia's harvest, dependent on the ``Gu'' rains that fall between April and June, is in trouble because rainfall was light and scattered and occurred for only half the normal period.

Somalia, where insecurity in the south makes relief work difficult, has seen three years of poor harvests in a breadbasket region in the Jubba valley.

Kenya is also hard hit by a lack of rain as well as crop-eating army worms. High malnutrition rates in Kenya's North Eastern province, a semi-desert area inhabited mainly by pastoralists, point to food shortages.

Kenya is likely to see a maize deficit of around 162,000 tonnes this year from 2.1 million tonnes last year, according to WFP food security adviser Robin Wheeler.

Eight members of parliament from North Eastern province appealed to the government on Tuesday to declare a state of emergency in the region to avert starvation because of a loss of livestock, according to the Daily Nation newspaper.

Ethiopia suffered a massive famine in 1984-85, while tens of thousands died in Somalia because of a famine in the early nineties caused largely by a civil war between militia groups.

In a statement faxed to AFP here on Tuesday, the Somali Human Rights and Peace Network (SHRPN), said that organisations charged with responsibility for pacifying Somalia had become entangled in Somali inter-clan strife by taking sides in the conflict. The group was referring notably to the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Arab League.

The SHRPN, which is based in Mogadishu, specifically blames Ethiopia and its neighbour Eritrea, both members of IGAD, for fuelling violence in Somalia by rearming warring factions, thus bringing more insecurity in many parts of southern Somalia. IGAD comprises Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and, in principle, Somalia.

Eritrea and Ethiopia are believed to have been arming their "favourite groups" in Somalia since a border war broke out between the two Horn of Africa countries in May last year.

Two Arab League members -- Egypt and Libya -- support the Mogadishu Joint Administration established by some Somali factions, but rejected by others, a move which has dented the neutrality of the two north African nations.

The SHRPN supports a planned national reconciliation conference in Hargeisa, the capital of the breakaway, unrecognised Republic of Somaliland in northwest Somalia. The Hargeisa meeting was suggested by some factions and external experts after many attempts to convene the reconciliation conference in southern Somalia ended in failure.

The town of Baidoa in south-central Somalia and the southern port city of Kismayo have been the scene of heavy fighting this month, with both Eritrea and Ethiopia being implicated in the fighting.

Warlord Hussein Mohamed Aidid has accused Ethiopia of carrying out an attack on Baidoa, which his faction has controlled since 1995, but was lost to the local Rahanwein Resistance Army (RRA) on June 6.

Aidid lost most of his war machines during the latest battle for Baidoa. The faction, which lost Kismayo, meanwhile accused Eritrea of being involved in the assault that enabled its rivals to take control of the city.

Its secretary-general, Esmat Abdel-Meguid, said after talks with Somali warlords Hussein Mohamed Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohamed, that he had asked them to work to restore security and stability in the war-ravaged Horn of Africa country.

``He (Abdel-Meguid) assured them that the Arab League was ready to host a Somali national reconciliation conference,'' the League said in a statement on Tuesday. It said such a meeting would involve Somali factions along with national and regional groups, as well as other countries.

Somalia's central government collapsed in 1991, leaving the country split between feuding clan-based militia factions.

A senior Arab diplomat said the League was involved in intensive contacts with all sides in the conflict to try to overcome a freeze in peace efforts in recent months. Aideed told reporters on Monday all Somali leaders wanted all-party peace talks to be convened with Arab League help.

He said he had asked the League to press Ethiopia to end what he said was a military incursion 240 km (150 miles) deep into Somali territory that resulted in the capture of the key central town of Baidoa.

The year-long border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea recently spilled over into neighbouring Somalia, with both countries pouring in soldiers and guns in support of rival factions which they see as helping their own strategic aims.

Two weeks ago a Somali faction seized Baidoa from Aideed's forces. Aideed's allies, with backing from Eritrea, evened up by capturing the southern port city of Kismayu a few days later.

Since arriving in Egypt a few days ago, Aideed and Mahdi have met Egyptian officials to review progress since a Somali peace agreement reached in Cairo at the end of 1997.

Seventy-six Jews landed at Ben-Gurion airport near Tel Aviv on an Ethiopian Airlines commercial flight.

``This is the first of 40 flights on which we plan over the next 40 weeks to bring to Israel the 3,800 Jews from Quara,'' said Michael Jankelowitz, spokesman for the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency.

Authorities airlifted nearly 30,000 Jews from Ethiopia to Israel in two operations in 1984-85 and 1991. Jankelowitz said the Jews of lower Quara were left behind in 1991 because they could not make their way to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Abeba.

This time, thousands journeyed by foot for three weeks from their homes in Quara to Gondar where they await flights to Israel.

It quoted the birr on Monday at a mean rate of 8.031 to the dollar from 7.9310 last week.

Traders said the central bank offered $6 million at Saturday's weekly wholesale auction but failed to satisfy dollar demand.

The bank had offered up to $20 million the previous week.

Foreign currency demand was particularly high ahead of July 7, the end of the fiscal year, as parastatal firms sought to spend what was left of their budgets, market analysts said.

Ethiopia is fighting a bitter year-old border war against Eritrea, a factor which has accelerated the currency's decline.

The birr was pegged at 2.07 to the dollar for more than 25 years before it was devalued in 1992 to 5.0 to the dollar. Last year the government loosened foreign exchange controls, authorising commercial banks to conduct transactions.