Exodus from NW Pakistan

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

refid:11612070 ilişkili resim dosyası

The U.N. said half a million people have either already left or are trying to flee the bombings in the northwestern area that followed strong U.S. pressure on Pakistan to fight back against militants advancing toward the capital as a now-defunct peace deal crumbled.

The Pakistani army has claimed to have killed more than 140 militants in the past day in Swat, adding it lost seven soldiers on Friday in an increasingly bloody confrontation. Pakistan has launched at least a dozen operations in the border region in recent years, but most ended inconclusively and after massive destruction and significant civilian deaths. It remains a haven for al-Qaida and Taliban militants, foreign governments say.

Pakistan's prime minister appealed for international assistance late Thursday for the growing refugee crisis and vowed to defeat the militants in the latest operation. "I appeal to the people of Pakistan to support the government and army at this crucial time," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said. "We pledge to eliminate the elements who have destroyed the peace and calm of the nation and wanted to take Pakistan hostage at gunpoint," The Associated Press quoted him as saying.

Taliban control
Meanwhile, the mayor of Mardan, the main district to the south of the fighting, said an estimated 250,000 people had fled in recent days and that more were on the move. Of those, 4,500 were staying in camps, while the rest were with relatives or rented accommodation, he said.

Pakistani officials have said up to 500,000 are expected leave. The exodus from Swat adds to the more than 500,000 already displaced by fighting elsewhere in Pakistan's volatile border region with Afghanistan.

A teacher joining the streams of refugees fleeing Swat's main town Mingora said it was completely under Taliban control. "Whenever I see jets and helicopter gunships, I see death hovering overhead," said Zubair Ahmed, a teacher escaping on foot from Mingora with eight members of his family, told Agence France-Presse.

A spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Ron Redmond, said Friday in Geneva that up to 200,000 people have arrived in safe areas in the past few days and that another 300,000 are on the move or are about to flee. Tens of thousands of people remain trapped in Mingora. Some have said the Taliban are not allowing them to leave, perhaps because they want to use them as "human shields" and make the army unwilling to use force.