His family is not notified. There is no funeral.

Tens of thousands of soldiers are believed to have died in two years fighting, but none of the bodies are flown home for burial and the armies only occasionally dig mass graves for their dead.

Instead, they are left for scavengers and when they have had their fill the bodies rot and slowly waste away.

Wounded soldiers who are left behind face the most wretched deaths.

Berhane Yerga, a 30-year-old Eritrean feared the worst when he was wounded and abandoned last week on the first day of a huge Ethiopian offensive.

"All I was afraid of was that I would die a terrible death, my body covered with wounds and rotting," he said on Thursday. "I prayed for it not to happen. It was not the dying but the way I was going to die that was so awful."

Lying under the intense sun, unable to move because of shrapnel wounds to his feet and legs, Berhane spent four days and nights alone. He said he thought only of his wife and two children and of the death that awaited him.

NO CHANCE OF RESCUE

"To be honest, I thought they'd kill me," said Berhane, a conscript. "They have come to kill us and we try to kill them, so I thought they would kill me."

But when two Ethiopian soldiers found Berhane they called for help and carried him to this small Eritrean border town where he is now held in a mud hut with four other wounded Eritrean prisoners.

Berhane's lips and tongue are blistered from the sun and he is very weak, at times struggling for breath as he ate "injera" bread covered with a thick sauce.

But he said he was being treated well and believed the war was a result of rivalries between the governments, not the people, of the two countries.

"You have to remember we are like water and milk. We mix, and we are brothers....The people of Ethiopia and Eritrea are not enemies," he said. "Sadly, war will leave bad feelings for both."

On the plains around Shelalo, there is plenty of evidence of what Berhane feared most.

The area is littered with the corpses of soldiers from both sides, some from last week's offensive and plenty more from earlier fighting.

A group of 10 Ethiopians, holding an official demonstration, were standing close to Downing Street when a crowd of 250 people, calling for a withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Eritrea, gathered "spontaneously" outside the Treasury (Department of Finance), a police spokeswoman said.

"The mood of the protest was vociferous. There have been some minor scuffles and we arrested seven Eritreans," she said, adding that while the Ethiopian demonstrators had dispersed, the pro-Eritreans were still disrupting traffic.

"Six people have been injured but nothing serious," she added.

The Ethiopian group had brought a petition with them but the police spokeswoman said it was unclear what it was about or who it was for.

The protest came as thousands of Eritrean civilians and soldiers fled Eritrea for Sudan on Friday to escape renewed fighting with Ethiopian forces.

"We are upset the United Nations has not demanded Ethiopia withdraws," said pro-Eritrea demonstrator Yemane Asfedai. "The international community must demand the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces."

Ethiopia and Eritrea first came to blows two years ago when a dispute over border territory erupted into a full scale war.

It settled into an uneasy stand-off, with diplomats from the United Nations attempting to broker a ceasefire -- until last Friday when Ethiopia launched its latest offensive.

The conflict between two of Africa's poorest nations has claimed up to 70,000 lives.