PICTURES OF THE YEAR

April As the war got under way in Kosovo, the Albanians' plight initially got worse, not better. Refugees are helped into an army truck before being herded off to a camp in northern Albania (above). Tractors and farm wagons bring thousands of refugees, including children with bullet wounds, to the Albanian border post of Morini (top right). A villager from Istok in northern Kosovo carries his two-year-old son (above right) along the muddy paths of the Montenegrin mountains towards the refugee camps of Rozaje. A woman walks through the ruins of the old town of Djakova, destroyed by the Serbs (below right)

March

The acceptable face of fashion. A model shows off a hat-mask combo designed by Alexander Jenkins during the London Alternative Fashion Week. Despite the hype attached to `Cool Britannia', many leading designers defected to the Paris and New York shows

Peter MacDiarmid

August After the earthquake that devastated Turkey, some apartment blocks, like this one in the town of Yolova, were flattened like a concertina. Rescue workers were looking for 160 missing people in this building. In the town of Gulcuk (below), women grieve among the ruins. Others forlornly gathered their remaining possessions David Rose

January The destruction wreaked by Hurricane Mitch flattened entire districts in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Only an iron gate remains, a reminder of what once stood here David Rose

October A boy helps button the shirt of an amputee whose hands have been cut off by rebels in Sierra Leone. Thousands lost their limbs during this conflict, sliced off by militiamen with machetes. This boy lives in a camp for amputees Brennan Linsley/AP