Among them is an 18-year-old woman captured on February 16 who now fears her baby will be born in the barrack block she shares with some 40 others.

In a separate block live several hundred men aged between 16 and 53, guarded by a dozen Ethiopian troops posted in watch towers around the 3,750 square metre (4,480 square yard) camp.

Camp officials asked visiting journalists not to reveal its exact location in northern Ethiopia "for security reasons."

Captain Memmour Nour said that until a month ago the prisoners had been held in tents in various parts of Tigray until they were brought to Camp 01, which has a capacity of between 2,000 and 3,000.

The captives said that since their arrival their conditions had improved. Previously they had been given little to eat except lentils, but now they had daily rations of around 650 grams (1.4 pounds) of food.

Lieutenant Tesfalet Haile, 35, summed up their feelings when he said: "The problem is not life in the camp, it's when it will be over."

Fighting between the two sides has intensified in recent days ahead of the rainy season, with fierce artillery duels and Ethiopian bombing raids. Each gives remarkably precise figures of the other's casualties but refuses to admit its own.

The war, which began more than a year ago, has its roots in economic and political differences, analysts say, and especially the loss of Ethiopia's Red Sea ports after its former province won a 30-year-independence war in 1991.

The young conscripts live apart from the officers, but they sometimes come together to watch television or listen to the radio. Eritrea's state radio is among the stations available.

Most of the prisoners were captured during fierce fighting in February on the western front when Ethiopian troops reconquered the disputed town of Badme after a battle in which both sides said thousands of lives were lost.

"We have treated more than 70 seriously wounded and we also have to deal with chronic illness like gastritis, pneumonia and tuberculosis," said Tekleas Gebreselassie, a camp doctor.

Many of the officers only recently graduated from Eritrea's military college, like Mouressa Bakhta, 21, who had been in the army just four months when he was captured on February 23.

One officer, who preferred not to be named, said "All I want is peace. I don't know what the two governments are arguing about, but I only did my duty."

Dait Asfay, a 29-year-old basketball coach from Asmara, said he only wanted to go home. "The hardest thing is not having news from the family," he added.

In mid-April representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross took letters from 300 prisoners for their families, but camp officials said they had received no replies as yet.

The UN Security Council last week called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, with a resolution expressing support for a peace plan put forward by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

That plan calls for reestablishing Ethiopian government control in the disputed Badme area on the western front, demilitarising the zone and deploying a peacekeeping force for six months, but Addis Ababa and Asmara are at odds over its interpretation.

The reporter, visiting the town of Sembel, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the front, said Monday that the booming of the artillery guns had diminished markedly from Sunday afternoon.

Ethiopian military spokesman Negash Teame said that in the 24 hours from Saturday morning to Sunday morning 2,000 Eritrean soldiers had been killed, 3,540 wounded and 10 taken prisoner.

Lieutenant Negash gave no figures for Ethiopian casualties.

The Eritrean foreign ministry said on Sunday that 850 Ethiopian troops had been killed, 3,100 wounded and 13 taken prisoner during the fighting on the western front on Friday and Saturday.

Neither side gave any explanation of how it was able to give such an accurate count of dead and wounded on the other side of the lines, and the figures -- like previous huge casualty tolls -- were impossible to verify independently.

It was clear, though, that the fighting was intense.

Ethiopians here said the clashes on the western front, which resumed on Friday after a lull of 10 days or so, resulted from an Eritrean offensive which the Ethiopian troops repulsed.

Ethiopian medical sources said most of the Ethiopian wounded had been hit by artillery shrapnel, while most of the Eritrean wounded had been hit by bullets as they charged out of their trenches. "We have the capacity to conclude this war," which began in May last year, said an Ethiopian officer of the western front high command.

"There are two ways of stopping the war: military victory or peaceful negotiations, but the chances of this solution (a negotiated settlement) are very slim," he said.

Observers said the renewed fighting was likely a result of both sides trying to gain territorial advantage before the heavy rains set in, making combat difficult.

It is already raining every day in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, and the waters of the Mereb River on the western front are rising.

Ethiopia said on Sunday that its air force had carried out a second bombing raid on the airport at Eritrea's Red Sea port of Assab, causing further extensive damage.

Asmara, however, said the bombs, which "seemed" to target the civilian airport, had fallen on the outskirts of Assab and caused no casualties or damage. An Eritrean statement on Sunday, received by AFP in Nairobi, said an Ethiopian attack on the western front on Friday had been quickly repulsed, but that Ethiopia had opened several small-scale attacks there on Saturday.

The UN Security Council last week called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, with a resolution expressing support for a peace plan put forward by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

That plan calls for reestablishing Ethiopian government control in the disputed Badme area on the western front, demilitarising the zone and deploying a peacekeeping force for six months, but Addis Ababa and Asmara are at odds over its interpretation.

Eritrea captured Badme at the start of the war, but Ethiopian troops reconquered it in February after a battle in which both sides said thousands of lives were lost.

Ethiopia is insisting that Eritrea withdraw from all other disputed territory along the border, some 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) long, before a ceasefire goes into effect, but Eritrea is rejecting the demand.

With the two armies just 50 metres (yards) apart at some places along the frontline, Eritrean soldiers press themselves against the rocks for protection and occasionally peep over the top at the Ethiopian positions.

Spent cartridges and shrapnel crunch underfoot and the constant boom of heavy artillery and crackle of machine guns bears witness to a new battle being fought nearby.

``The Ethiopian soldiers are very tough,'' said one Eritrean who had fought from hill to hill to reach his current position on the Mereb-Setit military front, close to the heavily contested border region of Badme.

Tens of thousands of soldiers are believed to have been killed in this Horn of Africa war, which started in May last year over disputed strips of barren border land.

Ethiopia says it has killed, wounded or captured around 30,000 Eritrean soldiers this month alone while Eritrea claims to have put 18,000 Ethiopians out of action and shot down four MiG-23 fighter jets and a helicopter gunship.

The rival claims are impossible to verify but reporters visiting both sides of the Mereb-Setit front this weekend saw evidence of heavy casualties.

Fifteen Ethiopian corpses lay rotting in the heat on a 150-metre section of front and another 20 lay inside a captured trench. Others were partly buried in sand and Eritrean military commanders said they had buried many more Ethiopian dead.

On the Ethiopian side of the front, reporters were shown the decaying corpses of dead Eritrean soldiers in the farming hamlet of Mai-Dogaley, the victims of fierce hand-to-hand fighting.

Badme has been a key theatre of the war since it erupted in May 1998. Eritrea seized the area in the first weeks of fighting but Ethiopian forces retook it in February.

A fresh round of intense fighting in the area began on June 10 and commanders on both sides claim to have the upper hand.

Eritrean Colonel Berhane Ogbagober said his forces have pushed Ethiopian forces back by up to five km (three miles) to a final line of hills on Eritrea's side of the border at Badme. Another push would force Ethiopian to retreat across the plains of Badme to hills on its side, he said.

``We have taken the good positions. Now the Ethiopian situation in Badme is very risky,'' he told Reuters in a weekend interview. ``Badme is now within range of our short-range guns.''

From a vantage point on Hill 1162, journalists saw the Ethiopian frontline positions being shelled on a nearby ridge with what appeared to be the plains of Badme behind.

But an Ethiopian commander said his forces had made advances and that Ethiopia would force Eritrea out of occupied territory.

``If Eritrea keeps on violating our territory, we have no option but to fight on. We have the means and the power to conclude the war the way we want it,'' he said.

Two Eritrean prisoners of war, both women, said they went to fight because they believed Badme was Eritrean.

``I was told that Badme is part of our country, Eritrea, so I came to fight against Ethiopia,'' said Tefeto Meggebu, 26, who has a 10-year-old son. She said she had willingly gone to war but was happy she escaped ``unscratched from that hell.''

Even as thousands of soldiers are killed and captured, both sides keep sending new recruits to the border war.

Behind Eritrean lines this weekend, a battalion of soldiers, including a few young women armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket propelled grenades, snaked through a village towards the front.

In the small village of Elalo, Eritrean soldiers ate breakfast and listened to reggae music on a battered cassette player, the boom of artillery fire breaking what otherwise might have seemed a peaceful scene. ``One heart, one love, peace'' said a young national serviceman listening to the tape.

In this Ethiopian town in northern Tigray province, behind the front lines, a military spokesman accused Eritrea of launching a "complete forces" attack on Friday morning.

"The fighting continued throughout the day," Lieutenant Negash Teame, Ethiopian army spokesman for the western Badme front, told a visiting AFP reporter.

Eritrea confirmed the fighting, but a foreign ministry statement received in Nairobi accused Ethiopia of launching an offensive, ending a lull of about 10 days in the war between the two Horn of Africa countries.

The Ethiopian attack, around the Mereb and Setit rivers, started around 8:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) and was continuing in the afternoon, the Eritrean statement said.

It claimed that in fighting in the same region earlier this month "more than 18,000 Ethiopian soldiers were killed or wounded, while four MiG-23 fighter planes and an MI-35 helicopter gunship were destroyed."

The Ethiopian government claimed it put 24,450 Eritrean troops "out of action" in that fighting.

Two Eritrean prisoners of war here confirmed that the earlier fighting was intense. Al Amin Said, 20, and Osman Mussa Idris, 45, said the fighting was "violent."

They told AFP the Eritrean army had gone on the attack at 4:30 a.m. on June 17. Said, wounded in both legs, was given first aid by local civilians in the village of Maye Eogale.

Idris, whose right leg was broken by a bullet, said he spent three days in a river before being taken prisoner.

The UN Security Council on Tuesday called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the 14-month-old war.

A resolution expressed support for the diplomatic efforts of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), Security Council President Baboucarr-Blaise Jagne of Gambia told reporters in New York.

An OAU peace plan "remains a viable and sound basis for a peaceful resolution to the conflict," he added.

That plan calls for reestablishing Ethiopian government control in the disputed Badme area, demilitarizing the zone and deploying a peacekeeping force for six months, but Addis Ababa and Asmara are at odds over its interpretation.

Eritrea captured Badme at the start of the war in May last year, but Ethiopian troops reconquered it in February after a battle in which both sides said thousands of lives were lost.

Ethiopia is insisting that Eritrea withdraw from all other disputed territory along the 1,000-kilometre (600-mile) -border before a ceasefire goes into effect, but Eritrea is rejecting that.

Diplomatic efforts to resolve the war are continuing, all based on the OAU plan, but observers say they have little chance of success until one or other side wins a decisive military advantage.

Reports via VHF radio said that dozens of armored vehicles and hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers on Sunday had surrounded the town of Garba Harre, 250 miles northwest of Mogadishu, and that the attack began late Sunday night.

No casualty figures were available, but witnesses who spoke on the radio said the Ethiopians faced little resistance from forces loyal to the Somali National Front, or SNF, which had controlled the town 75 miles south of the Ethiopian border.

Somalia has had no central government since 1991, when warlords who had joined together to oust dictator Mohamed Siad Barre turned on each other. In the past two months, Ethiopian forces have joined with Somali factions to take most of the towns in the southern part of the Horn of Africa country.

The fall of Garba Harre ends the influence in the southern Gedo region of Gen. Omar Hajji Massaleh, a close ally of south Mogadishu warlord Hussein Mohamed Aidid.

Independent sources in the area who spoke on condition of anonymity said some Somali militiamen accompanied the Ethiopians, and that hundreds of residents have fled.

Ethiopian military activity in Somalia has picked up in the past several months since Eritrea, its enemy in a 13-month border war, began supplying Aidid with weapons and ammunition. Eritrea also supports the Oromo Liberation Front, which opposes the government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Kenya, Ibrahim Egal, the president of the breakaway Somaliland republic, met Monday with Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi to discuss events in Somalia, the state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Egal established his breakaway state after Somalia's central government collapsed in 1991, but Somaliland has failed to gain international recognition as a state. Egal's presence in Nairobi coincided with the arrival Sunday from Cairo of several Somali warlords and an aide to Aidid.

Racing in wet conditions, the 26-year-old Olympic 10,000 meters champion sprinted the first lap in 54 seconds to grab a lead and then burst home to win the Emsley Carr Mile in 3 minutes, 52.39 seconds.

``I expected more than this ... but I could not run faster,'' Gebreselassie said. ``The first lap was okay, the second and third were a little bit slow. I'll try to run faster in Oslo.''

Britain's John Maycock was second in 3:55.70, and Russia's Andrey Zadorozhnyi finished third in 3:56.19.

Gebreselassie, who set world records in both the 5,000 and 10,000 meters in June last year, said he was using his first appearance at Gateshead as a warm-up for another assault on the 5,000 meters record.

The star of distance running, with 15 current or previous world records, will try for another record in Oslo on Wednesday night.

British hurdler Colin Jackson, who recorded the world's fastest time in the 110 meters hurdles this year on Saturday, completed a double by winning the sprint hurdles on Sunday in 13.35.

In the women's 400 meters, world champion Cathy Freeman returned from an injury layoff to run a season-best 50.66 and edge Nigerian Falilat Ogunkoya, ranked world No. 1 in 1998, who ran 50.73.

After trailing early, Freeman came back and held off Ogunkoya over the final 30 meters. Jamaican Tracy Barnes finished third in 51.51.

"This is the second attack on this strategic military target in two days," a government statement said. "Today's attack by the Ethiopian Air Force caused extensive damage to the runway."

Eritrea, however, said the raid -- like a similar one on Saturday -- caused no casualties or damage. It added that the bombing raids were "an apparent attempt to divert attention from the heavy defeats that Ethiopia's infantry is suffering on the ground."

Ethiopia said its planes returned safely from their mission. Eritrean claims to have shot down 25 Ethiopian planes in the two nations' 13-month border war were false, it added.

Each side claimed on Sunday to have inflicted heavy casualties on the other in the latest round of fighting on their common border. Eritrea said fighting on the ground had resumed on Sunday, but gave no indication of the outcome. Its statement said Eritrean forces killed 850 Ethiopian soldiers, wounded 3,100 and captured 13 when repulsing "small-scale and feeble attacks" in two sectors of the 1,000 km (600 mile) border on Friday and Saturday.

The Ethiopian government, in a statement issued in Addis Ababa, said its forces repelled an Eritrean attack around the Mereb river. Ethiopia said its forces killed, wounded or captured 5,950 Eritrean troops in the two days of fighting.

Ethiopia's statement said: "The Eritrean army is launching repeated attacks in the Mereb river area in an attempt to regain positions that were recaptured by the Ethiopian Defence Forces. "These attacks come at a time when the Organisation of African Unity chairman is asking Eritrea to withdraw from Ethiopian territories it occupied after May 6 1998."

Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993, with Ethiopian agreement. In May 1998, a war began over disputed strips of barren border land and tens of thousands of soldiers have been reported killed.

In fighting earlier this month on a front southwest of the Eritrean capital Asmara, Eritrea said its forces killed, wounded or captured 18,000 Ethiopian soldiers. Ethiopia said it killed, wounded or captured more than 24,000 Eritreans.

Ethiopia said fighting along the Mereb river resumed on Friday when Eritrea attacked, and continued into Saturday.

The claims could not be verified independently.

On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council demanded an immediate ceasefire. But similar calls have been ignored in the past and diplomatic attempts to end the war have so far failed.

Both sides say they accept an OAU initiative to halt the fighting and initiate negotiations on contested border areas, but they differ in their interpretation of the peace formula.