A Keighley woman just back from a tour of Pakistan says she may return for a year to help Kashmiri refugees.

Shabana Sarwar, 24, a youth worker at Keighley Asian Women and Children's Centre, who led six local women on the three-week expedition with Noreen Akhtar of Keighley Voluntary Services, described the trip as "mind-blowing."

They flew back to England on Sunday, but Shabana says she was so moved by the refugees she met in a camp in Azad Kashmir that she may go back and help.

Shabana, a former nursery nurse, says: "I know you've got to be strong-minded.

"I was recording everything on camera with tears in my eyes. I don't mind taking a year out and helping out."

The camps, about four hours from Islamabad, consisted of mud huts and shanty towns built into hillsides.

The refugees' tragic tales included that of a woman who killed her baby to prevent him crying and risking 60 other refugees, trying to escape the disputed Kashmir border, being imprisoned or killed.

The group were so moved by what they heard and saw that they collected £300 in a whip-round to give to the camp. Shabana plans to return when tensions in the country over the Afghan war have lifted, and says other members of the group may join her.

"We would like to work in the hostels for a year," she says. "One place I saw had 30 people living in one room - and we complain about sharing a bedroom. Starting from now I'm going to be a totally different person."

l Despite safety fears while the group was in Pakistan they experienced no trouble.

Noreen Akhtar says the Manpower Ministry ensured the all-female group was surrounded by security even though they were closer to the Indian border than the threatened North-West Frontier (bordering with Afghanistan).

Noreen adds: "Pakistan already had lots of Afghan refugees. There have only been riots in refugee-dominated areas.

"Most have been led by people with Afghan roots. Actual Pakistanis feel the president, General Pervez Musharraf, couldn't do anything other than side with America as it would put Pakistan's democracy into trouble.

l More details and pictures from the trip in next week's KN.