Aid workers Clive Phoenix and Trevor Sutcliffe have returned to York after completing their first mercy mission to Kosovar refugees.

Mercy mission: Trevor Sutcliffe, left, and Clive Phoenix who are bound for Kosovo

The pair, who work for the charity WATCH, delivered water treatment tablets and equipment worth £200,000 to aid agencies working at camps in Albania.

The one million purification tablets and three water filtration units - donated by Yorkshire Water - are intended to help provide safe drinking water to tens of thousands of Kosovars who have flooded over the border into Albania.

Clive, of Haxby, said water supplies across Albania were polluted and poisoned, even those taken from artesian wells.

And he claimed the whole country was in a state of total chaos, with refugee camps turning into "death camps".

He was also very critical of the official aid agencies and charities working in Albania, claiming they had so far failed disastrously to sort out the refugees' problems.

Clive, Trevor and three other WATCH members took a 7.5 ton truck and a Land Rover and trailer to Albania almost a fortnight ago.

He said they arrived at docks in Durres on a Saturday morning, but, despite having been invited out by the Albanian Government, they were unable to leave until the Sunday evening, after a great deal of "negotiation".

When they got into the country, they found conditions for ordinary Albanians were terrible.

"I have never seen anything like it. It was in a state of total chaos. The roads were just a series of holes.

"Rubbish was piling up everywhere, including the carcasses of cats, dogs, horses, you name it. The binmen just collect the rubbish and go to a stream or river and dump it in.

"And the sewerage system has collapsed. The water supplies are poisoned."

Yorkshire Water said today it was delighted its equipment had got to Albania, and would be used to help provide safe water to the refugees.

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