A ferryboat with food and other supplies docked today at the Albanian port of Durres as Italy began a large-scale Albanian relief effort.
Witnesses, speaking from the nation's capital, Tirana, said the ferry carried 200 vehicles filled with basic goods, part of 2,000 tons in aid scheduled for distribution over the next three months throughout the country.
More than 700 Italian soldiers are scheduled to go to Albania to help coordinate efforts to feed the nation, Europe's poorest.
Italy's decision to help Albania followed a large-scale exodus of Albanian asylum-seekers across the Adriatic Sea earlier this year. More than 40,000 Albanians sailed to Italy seeking to escape their homeland and the misery left by more than four decades of Stalinist repression and economic mismanagement.
Italy was initially lenient but took a harder line when some 20,000 Albanians arrived in August. Nearly all were sent back.