Audio Reference: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/focusonafrica/daily.ram Link will only be available for May 16, 2000

Peter Biles: An Ethiopian airforce helicopter has just landed about two or three-hundred yards away from us. And that’s all part of the activity that we’ve seen in the air today. Helicopter gunships flying north towards Eritrea. And also jets. We’ve seen five or six or at least heard jet fighters heading northwards into Eritrean airspace. Five or six times in the course of this afternoon.

Question: Does this indicate that the nature of the fighting has changed?

Peter Biles: Well all I can say from this vantage point on the western front is that those trenches on the Eritrean side have been abandoned. The Ethiopians have been pushing quite firmly into Eritrea. They have certainly occupied towns close to the border, I saw that for myself yesterday. And according to the Ethiopians, they pushed the Eritrean forces back, they say to within 15 kilometers of the town of Barentu, which lies on the main road from Asmara to the west in Eritrea.

So I think the Ethiopians believe that they are taking charge and going into Eritrea in some force here on the western front. But of course there are other fronts in the center and the east of the country, and the situation there is still far from clear.

Question: Are they giving you any information about the fighting on the other fronts?

Peter Biles: No, they’re not. The Ethiopian government has been quite open in what it has been able to show us here in the west over the last couple of days, but it is a very localized view. We’ve got no information at all about what’s happening at Zalanbessa, or at Burie down near the port of Assab.

Question: Do we have any idea about the scale of the casualties. I know that there are no official figures, but are you getting any feel at the scale of the casualties that may have been involved?

Peter Biles: Not really. We saw yesterday dozens of bodies on the battlefield just inside Eritrea, behind the Eritrean lines. But one prisoner of war, one Eritrean prisoner of war that we spoke to today, a young teacher from Asmara who had been brought to the frontlines as a conscript, Zerai Tesfai. He said that when he was captured on Friday, I asked him about the scale of the casualties, and he said he’d only seen two or three Eritrean soldiers who had been killed. I think that means that perhaps what happened last Friday when the Ethiopians broke through the Eritrean trenches is that it all happened rather quickly. The prisoner of war said that he was captured at about midday, so that was less than 12 hours after the offensive began. And it appears to have been all over within the space of less than 24 hours. The Ethiopians broke through, the Eritreans retreated.

Question: So the Ethiopians have been displaying prisoners of war today?

Peter Biles: Yes. They showed us a group of 470 who are on a camp near the border. They say it’s a temporary camp and that these prisoners of war will be moved well away from the border in due course to more permanent accommodation.

The conditions are not too bad, although it must be said that it’s a very harsh environment here. It’s very dry, it’s very hot. The conditions are basic. But the prisoners do have food and water and medical attention. What they do lack is decent shelter. Most of them are just surviving with sheets that have been taped to the ground. Although there are some 70 injured, wounded, Eritrean soldiers and they are inside small stone huts and receiving medical care.

Peter Biles on a satellite phone from Ethiopian-held territory inside Eritrea.