After 12 hours hard walking through Kosovo, we had seen little apart from a few patrols of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army.

Then, in the woods outside the first big town, we saw them - hundreds of families, who had been surviving out in the open since the Nato bombing began and since the Serbs, they said, had burned them out of their homes.

Two babies had been born out here in the woods in that time. The camp doctor said they were now suffering from malnutrition, like many of the children.

Paul Wood: We saw hundreds of families living rough in the forest

Families were clustered together in little shelters made of plastic sheeting, branches and oak leaves.

One of the plastic shelters was a field hospital, although the doctor said there were no medicines. Fires were dotted around the camp.

Defiance and fear

Some of the people said they had been too afraid to try to leave for another country.

Others said that Kosovo was their home and they were not going to leave, even if it meant living like this.

They said that outside every big town and village people had fled into the woods, living almost in sight of their homes.

The sound of Nato planes was almost constant. We heard two deafening explosions not far away - Serbian positions just the other side of the hill being destroyed, the KLA soldiers with us said.

One of the babies born in the forest was named Victoria, "victory" in Albanian. She is a pretty child but not in the best of health.