ADIGRAT, Ethiopia, June 10 (Reuters) - Wandering aimlessly through the streets or huddled in groups in the shade, the throngs of homeless people who have fled fighting in their home town on the Eritrean border pondered their uncertain future.
At least 16,000 men, women and children have made the 30 km (19 miles) journey south from Zalambessa -- the border town which has become the main battle front in the bloody month-old conflict -- and more are arriving every day.
Some of the elderly who were too frail to travel were left behind, the people said.
``I came here in only what I am wearing,'' said Shewainesh Meles, ``All my clothes and possessions are there.''
Dessed in filthy ragged clothes, her three children played with others with makeshift toys in the dust, while babies slung on their mothers' backs blinked flies away from their eyes.
Zalambessa epitomised the former friendship between the two Horn of Africa nations -- a town where Ethiopians and Eritreans lived peacefully side by side.
``Before this we were like brothers,'' Shewainesh said. ``Almost half of us were Eritreans ... we were living together and eating together.''
Ethiopians and Eritreans fought together in the 30-year guerrilla struggle which eventually ousted military dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991. Eritrea took its independence two years later.
Now believed to be in Eritrean hands, Zalambessa's Ethiopian former residents believe they have lost everything.
``I don't believe my house is still there,'' said Mogessa Asafa, also a mother of three. ``My house is destroyed and all my belongings are destroyed.''
Reuters correspondents behind Eritrean lines, however, reported that the town was largely undamaged.
Many Eritreans had also fled to Adigrat and were being well treated, local officials said, but none could be found to be interviewed.
``We will not take revenge on them, but our husbands are fighting against them and they have made us displaced,'' said Shewainesh. ``We could not be the same friends as before.''
Most of the displaced have been billeted with local families, but as numbers swell, many are forced to sleep on the streets or walk to nearby villages to find shelter at night, Mewcha Gebre Medhin, the head of Disaster Prevention and Preparedness for the area, told Reuters.
He said half of the displaced had been given rations of grain and oil, but supplies were running low.
``Now the farmers from the villages (around Zalambessa) are also coming,'' he said. `The population of the whole area is around 100,000 -- if they all come there won't be enough grain.''
Among the displaced were Ethiopians living in Eritrea, who said they had been sacked from their jobs and driven out of their houses.
``I couldn't live there because they wanted to attack us and drive us out,'' said Haile Selassie Abrha, who worked as a labourer in the Eritrean port city of Massawa.
``They took us by bus to the border and I walked from there.''
Local officials said the border area was peaceful on Wednesday morning after fierce infantry and artillery battles on Tuesday, in which both sides claimed to have inflicted heavy casualties.
The Ethiopian army said it repulsed four attempts by Eritrea to push southwards into its territory.
Reinforcements of troops, militia and heavy artillery guns rattled through Adigrat throughout the night on their way to the front.