A Keighley man returned to Britain this week after searching for survivors in the rubble of a war-ravaged West Bank refugee camp.

Stefan Hopkins spent several days with a rescue team in the Jenin camp, the heart of which has been decimated by Israeli forces.

The former Greenhead School student said: "There was a very strong smell of death everywhere."

Tanks, bulldozers and army helicopters have razed to the ground tightly packed houses -- several storeys high -- at the camp.

The death toll is not known and many bodies are still believed to be buried beneath the tangled remains of their homes.

Within hours of arriving back on British soil on Wednesday, Stefan spoke to the Keighley News about the horrors of Jenin, where his team was working in an area strewn with ordnance and booby-trap bombs.

The 36-year-old was part of a 12-strong contingent of volunteers from the charity Rapid UK who flew out to Israel on Saturday, at the specific request of the United Nations and a Palestinian delegation based in the UK.

More used to attending the scenes of natural disasters, such as the Indian earthquake just over a year ago, the team this time was faced with a very different -- and much more dangerous -- situation.

"When you are working in an area hit by a natural disaster there are still dangers -- for example, in the case of an earthquake, there is the risk of after shocks -- but what confronted us in Jenin was something else," said Stefan.

"The landscape in terms of the devastation caused was much the same as you would find with an earthquake. The refugee camp is not a tented city, it is an area within the town with three and four-storey buildings which are people's homes.

"What we found was a 500 by 400 metre area in the centre of the camp razed to the ground. Nothing was standing, there was just a pile of rubble where once there were over 100 buildings. Others around them were partially collapsed.

"What was different from our normal scenario was the fact that we were between two warring factions. Even while we worked, there were gunfights going on around us.

"The biggest threat, however, was from unexploded ordnance in the rubble. We had to be extremely careful not to detonate bombs or booby traps, which were everywhere.

"Indeed, our first briefing on arrival in the area was from two bomb disposal guys who showed us the sort of thing we should be looking out for.

"We were aware before we set out of the possibility of gunfire and ordnance, but we did not anticipate the scale of it.

"Within two hours of us being in Jenin an explosion just a short distance from where we were working killed a child and severely injured another. They had picked up a device, which then blew up.

"Also close to us, three people were shot. One was killed outright and we understand the other two died later. We were told they could have been collaborators. We didn't come under attack ourselves."

He added: "On arrival we were thoroughly searched by the Israelis, who very carefully checked our authority to go in, but they were extremely helpful and no aggression was shown towards us.

"The Palestinians were also nervous at first, but when they realised we were there to help them, there was no problem at all."

Accommodation for Stefan and his team was a bullet and shell-riddled former primary school, where the gates had been painted in UN blue.

With the camp area subjected to a siege situation, supplies were at a minimum. The team survived on food that the members had taken with them, and some bottled water they had managed to acquire.

Although the only casualties to be pulled from the rubble were bodies, Stefan felt the mission had been a success. The Palestinians could see that the world had not forgotten them, and we managed to locate and remove a lot of ordnance that otherwise children may have picked up," he said. "In that sense it was successful."

Stefan -- whose paid job is selling equipment for the elderly and disabled -- has been involved with Rapid UK as a volunteer for two and a half years.

His first and only other rescue mission to date was to the Indian earthquake zone. But he has been on stand-by no fewer than 14 times since to fly out to other disaster areas, including New York after the September 11 terrorist attack.

Stefan -- who now lives in Gloucester -- lived until four years ago in Keighley, latterly at Riddlesden. His family, including his parents and both brothers, still live locally.