A BIG, heartfelt "thank you". That's the message to Daily Echo readers who helped send 130 tons of vital aid to refugees in southern Serbia.

Volunteers from the Hampshire branch of Hope and Aid Direct have just returned safely home following a gruelling 12-day round trip, travelling 3,500 miles, to deliver the essential supplies.

Organisers said it was a successful but emotional trip, with desperate refugees delighted to receive items including bedding, clothing and toiletries.

The charity was hoping to help some of the thousands of people who fled their Kosovo homes following the outbreak of war in 1999.

Today, some 20,000 people remain displaced, facing the prospect of rebuilding their lives in the war-torn villages they escaped to and never returning to their homeland.

By donating old and unwanted foreign currency in the Daily Echo's green bucket campaign, readers helped to raise more than £3,000 to fund a second lorry to carry aid from the county.

Both were packed with toiletries, children's toys and books, cots, clothes and other essentials, forming part of a 14-strong aid convoy from across the country.

Volunteer Bernard Sullivan, 58, who took part in the trip, said: "We would like to thank the Daily Echo and all its readers for the magnificent support we have received, not only in aid, but also the foreign currency collection.

"We spent a total of six days actually in Serbia. It was quite an emotional trip.

"One Serb man we met was given a wheelchair in very good condition.

"He had committed the 'sin' of marrying an Albanian woman. They were caught by KLA fleeing from Kosovo just 100 metres from the border. His wife was shot dead in front of him. He was immersed up to his neck in cold water for 24 hours, causing him permanent paralysis."

Mr Sullivan of Thornbury Wood, Chandler's Ford, was accompanied by his partner Susie Barker and friend Don Wiggins of Wryneck Close, Lordswood, Southampton.

"It was quite interesting to go to see the other side of things from the Kosovo point of view," he said.

"We had been last year and seen some of the returning Albanians and this time we saw the displaced Serbian people. We also met a number of refugees from the previous conflict in Croatia.

"They were in so much need of all sorts of things and everything they were really pleased to receive.

"At a theatre in Kraljavo in southern Serbia they were using the auditorium floor as a home for 15 families. All the chairs had been ripped out but the stage was still there and a glitter ball still hanging from the ceiling.

"Walls of each living unit were made out of wooden packaging crates with hanging blankets to separate the different living areas. There were no windows, only a few bulbs hanging from the ceiling.

"We also bought huge quantities of vegetables and distributed these to the refugees accommodated in three large government buildings."

There is still more aid set to help the refugees and the three volunteers expect to repeat the trip next year.

Mr Sullivan added: "Perhaps the greatest lesson to learn from our visit was that in war, good and evil exist on all sides, and in the aftermath we all so easily forget the lives that have been destroyed forever."