It was a cold coming they had of it. Thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees fled Kosovo on Wednesday after some had walked for up to two days and nights in the freezing mountains without food to escape Serbian security forces and reach Serbia's sister republic of Montenegro.
Hundreds of refugees arriving from Kosovo's western town of Pec yesterday milled in the wet streets of Rozaje, just inside Montenegro's border with the Serbian province. Women and young children sat on the pavement on damp blankets in icy rain with nowhere to go. Others sought sanctuary in cold, half-built houses.
Tractors, trailers, minibuses and cars packed with people steaming up windows choked the town, most with the telltale PE number plates from Pec. In one car two old men sat in their pyjamas with blankets over their laps. Both paralysed, they had had no time to put on anything warmer.
Enver Zeneli (30) told how he had fled Pec with his wife and two sons, Arberon (five) and Albion (two) when Serbian paramilitary forces swept through the town and told everyone to leave.
"I walked for 30 hours with no food. Albion was crying, he had a high temperature but we had nothing to give him."
Zade Daci (66) was head of a family of 38 people who managed to cram into the back of the van to escape the Serbian security forces' terrifying sweep through Pec.
"We were at home at 1 p.m. yesterday when the paramilitaries and the police came," Mrs Daci said. She said everyone in the house had been spreadeagled against the walls of their homes and frisked. "They took us out and pointed guns at our hearts, they ran knives around our mouths and some fired off shots behind our heads."
Mrs Daci said they were then taken to the police station and told by Serbian police that there were no buses to transport them from the town but that they had to leave. "They told us to go home and wait `for buses' but we fled this morning after three paramilitaries wearing masks came and threatened us."
All her family looked relieved to have left the terror of Pec, but as refugees with nowhere to go and little money - Mrs Daci said some of the Serbian forces had stolen the women's jewellery - their only shelter was the van they arrived in. But she did not regret the NATO bombing that unleashed the full force of Serbian terror. "I thank all the members of NATO for acting," she said.
0Mahir Rama (38) also fled across the mountains with his wife, two children and his elderly mother. "We had no food," he said and pointing to his chest, added: "The snow was up to here in places. Some people died on the walk over the mountains." He did not know how many.
Ali Sitala (40) said ethnic Albanian men had been pulled out from the column of people fleeing on foot and shot. He was unsure of the numbers and in the confusion of the exodus, there are many rumours and stories that are difficult or impossible to confirm independently. But Mr Sitala was adamant. "I saw it myself. They were shot."
The refugee flow into Montenegro threatens a humanitarian disaster. Aid agencies have food and blankets stocked in and around Kosovo but with operations closed because of air strikes, there is no one to distribute it.
One of Rozaje's mosques was packed with women and children on both ground and upper levels.
Reuters adds from Geneva: Mrs Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said yesterday she was sending senior officials to the Balkans to investigate reports of widespread "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo.
Mrs Robinson told the UN Human Rights Commission she had asked Mr Jiri Dienstbier, the UN investigator for human rights in the former Yugoslavia, to travel to the region to carry out a firsthand assessment.