By Wendy Lubetkin, USIA European Correspondent

Geneva - About 174,000 Kosovar refugees have flooded back across the borders from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro in the nine days since NATO troops first entered Prizren, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said June 22.

UNHCR spokesperson Kris Janowski said 33,000 people crossed the borders in a single day June 21. "The stream continues and it is showing no signs of abating whatsoever."

The camps at Kukes in northern Albania, which just a week ago housed 35,000, are now virtually empty. Only a few hundred people, most of them elderly, remain.

UNHCR and other aid agencies on the ground in Kosovo are rapidly expanding their presence to try "to keep up with the needs, which are quite huge," Janowski told a press briefing. The primary need at the moment is for shelter, especially in the most heavily damaged towns and cities.

"We are bringing in as much shelter material -- which means plastic sheeting, wood, tents -- as possible, because the people are often going to areas which are quite destroyed," Janowski said. UNHCR was sending a convoy June 22 carrying tents directly from Skopje to Pec, one of the most damaged regions.

Janowski also reported that UNHCR staff have visited a group of about 50 people holed up in the Bogoslavija Monastery in Prizren. The group -- mainly elderly Kosovo and Krajina Serbs, as well as some Kosovo Albanians suspected of collaborating with the Serbs -- had been detained by the Kosovo Liberation Army in Prizren jail and were subsequently released by the Kosovo Peace Keeping Force (KFOR) and brought to the monastery.

"Some of them had some physical injuries such as black eyes, bruises, which indicate that they might have been beatened" Janowski said. "We are trying to now decide what to do with the group. They are safe for the time being since they are under KFOR protection in that monastery."

UNICEF spokesperson Patrick McCormick said returnees and internally displaced people in villages west and south of Pristina appear to be in fairly good shape, although a UNICEF team that traveled north to Podujevo found cases of malnutrition and dehydration.

McCormick, who had just returned from Kosovo, said UNICEF has noted a high level of destruction in villages and towns west and south of Pristina. "Many towns are burnt out shells with few people shifting gingerly through the debris or wandering around looking dazed."

The situation is more positive in Prizren "which was left untouched by the Serbs, and is now a bustling market town, with shops and restaurants open."