World | Pakistan
More civilians flee Swat valley as fighting rages on
Pakistani commandos dropped from helicopters behind Taliban lines in the Swat valley on Tuesday in a widening offensive that the military said has pushed the number of civilians fleeing fighting in the northwest to 1.3 million.
- Agencies
- Published: 22:52 May 12, 2009
Mardan: Pakistani commandos dropped from helicopters behind Taliban lines in the Swat valley on Tuesday in a widening offensive that the military said has pushed the number of civilians fleeing fighting in the northwest to 1.3 million.
Farther south, a suspected US missile attack flattened a house and killed at least eight people in another militant stronghold near the Afghan border.
Choppers inserted troops on "search and destroy" missions into the remote Piochar area in the upper reaches of the Swat Valley, army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said.
Officials have identified Piochar as the rear-base of an estimated 4,000 Taliban militants. It is seen as a possible hiding place of Swat Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah.
Abbas said the army had yet to begin the "hardcore urban fight" for Swat's towns, but a senior government official expressed rare optimism that the battle for Swat might prove short.
"The way they (militants) are being beaten, the way their recruits are fleeing, and the way the Pakistan army is using its strategy, God willing the operation will be completed very soon," Interior Minister Rehman Malek said.
Pakistani authorities launched a full-scale assault on Swat and surrounding districts last week after the Taliban pushed out from the valley on the back of a now-defunct peace deal and extended their control to areas just 100 kilometers from Islamabad.
The military response has won praise from American officials, who insist Islamabad must eliminate safe havens used by militants to undermine the pro-Western governments in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The army said on Tuesday that troops backed by artillery and airstrikes had killed 751 militants in Swat and neighbouring districts so far. It was unclear how it calculated that figure, which couldn't be independently verified. Abbas said the army lost 29 soldiers and had no reports of civilian casualties.
The UN has registered 360,000 refugees from the latest fighting. About 30,000 are living in hot, tented camps.
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