The prime minister's wife accompanied her husband when he visited refugees in the former Yugoslav republic earlier this week, and was clearly moved.

Cherie Blair: "These are children who have been exposed to terrible experiences"

The pictures, by children from the Neprostino refugee camp, went on show on Wednesday at the Foreign Office Information Centre in Whitehall.

They are the inspiration of Osman Mejzinolli, a refugee artist from Brenica who started art classes at the camp for children aged between six and nine.

Cherie Blair visted a refugee camp earlier in the week

They spontaneously produced images of tanks and guns, policemen with knives, houses on fire and dead people lying in the road with blood next to them.

At the opening, Mrs Blair said she had many "overwhelming memories" of the visit, including "the heat and the humidity, the sadness of so many of the refugees in situations that they could not possibly have imagined themselves to be in, yet their courage and their patience".

'Terrible experiences'

She also described "hundreds of thousands of children, children running around, shouting, playing, doing all the things you expect children to do".

She added: "Yet these were children who had been exposed to such terrible experiences and seen and heard things that no children should ever see or hear."

A Foreign Office spokesman said the show had been organised by The Sunday Express after the pictures were found last month by a reporting team that went to the camp to deliver aid.

'Determination to win'

It is running an appeal to help the refugees, and the drawings will be auctioned to raise further funds.

The opening was also attended by Express editor Rosie Boycott and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.

Mr Cook said earlier: "There could be no more moving expression of the horrors of ethnic cleansing than these pictures, drawn by the very children who are its victims.''

He added: "When I see these pictures, I become all the more determined that we must win this conflict - to give back to these children the hope that has so cruelly been taken away from them."