About 2,000 people from Albania have been sheltered in Prizren alone

Kosovo authorities, immediately after the earthquake, have sent specialised units of the Kosovo Police and the Kosovo Security Force to Albania with a search-for rescue mission, while the Government of Kosovo had allocated 500,000 euros in aid to Albania.

Various organisations in Kosovo had initially undertaken initiatives to help residents of areas affected by the earthquake in Albania and have at the same time brought a certain number of citizens of this country to Kosovo to take refuge in different cities in the country.

Nehat Kocija, public relations official from the Agency for Emergency Management, which operates within the Interior Ministry, tells Radio Free Europe that at night between Friday and Saturday, there has been an influx of persons who have come from Albania to Kosovo to take refuge.

According to him, at the Kosovaro German Innovative Training Camp in Prizren, where more than 500 people from Albania have been accommodated by Friday, while others have been accommodated in the private sector.

“currently, in Prizren, are arranged, to say in the public and private sector, about 2,000 people. In other cities, it is a disproportionate figure because movement is not rarely contradictory. Whatever numbers we give you can't be even close. This is because besides organized ways, there are ways, let's tell them, chaotic or spordical, that come, go or be warned, and then give another”, Kocian said.

Interior Ministry officials have said even earlier that through border points between Kosovo and Albania, so far, they have not established any special investigation into obtaining information about where people who enter Kosovo go.

Meanwhile, various organisations, immediately after the first day of the quake, have continued to bring citizens of affected areas to Kosovo in Albania. They were initially arranged in several hotels and then distributed through private homes of Kosovo citizens in various municipalities, which they voluntarily hosted.

However, Kocija says Kosovo authorities are already working to enumerate the systemisation of all those citizens of Albania who have been sheltered in Kosovo.

All these information or groups that come, in whatever way they're brought here, are in the system. But co-ordination is ongoing with the Kosovo Police, with its entry points in Kosovo, to get the data. A comparison of evidence, during the last evening, about 12,000 people entered the border checkpoint in Vremica. It means that 12 thousand people have not had their short- to medium-term systeming in Kosovo, but also were tourists of the case”, Kocija said.

He added that more Albanian citizens in Kosovo are expected, and vice versa, but no more is expected of any influx of those aimed at housing in Kosovo.

This, according to him, has been because the Government of Albania has taken steps to senbilise its citizens affected by the earthquake, that their systeming will take place within the capacities of the Albanian state. But, as Kocijana has said, even if there will be eventual movements from Albania towards Kosovo, with the aim of housing, Kosovo authorities on the border are reported on where they will be instructed.

Kosovo Government acting Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj has earlier invited citizens who want to offer assistance in food and other needed materials to send them to the Kosovo Security Force barracks in Prizren and then be carefully and checked in where there is a need.

The 6.4-magnitude quake, which hit Albania on November 26th, has been the most powerful one to have hit this country in recent decades and has subsequently left 51 people dead, thousands injured, and over 5 thousand homeless persons as a result of the collapses, serious damage and risklessness posed by their settlements. /rel/