More than 40,000 civilians have fled deadly clashes in Pakistan’s Swat valley, officials said yesterday, amid fears that fighting between Taliban and security forces will torpedo a peace deal.
The chaos forced Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari onto the defensive — he brushed aside US concern that Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters are threatening Pakistan’s very existence just hours before a summit with US counterpart Barack Obama.
Deadly clashes flared again overnight in Mingora, the main town in Swat, the one-time ski resort where local officials said armed Taliban have defied curfews and occupied government buildings, making a mockery of the peace deal.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The provincial government said it was scrambling to shelter up to 500,000 people they expect to flee Swat and local officials confirmed yesterday that tens of thousands had streamed out of the district in less than 24 hours.
“More than 40,000 have migrated from Mingora since Tuesday afternoon,” said Khushhal Khan, the chief administration officer in Swat.
“An exodus of more than 40,000 people is the minimum number — it should actually be more than 50,000,” an intelligence official said.
Bedraggled men, women in burqas and children piled onto pick-up trucks and led animals through streets in their haste to flee Swat, devastated by a nearly two-year Taliban insurgency to impose a repressive brand of Islamic law.
“I don’t want my unborn baby to have even the slightest idea what suicide attacks and bomb blasts are. That’s why I’m leaving Mingora with my husband,” a sobbing and heavily pregnant Bakht Zehra said. “For God’s sake tell me where I can bring up my child where there are no suicide attacks.”
Pakistan’s military has been pressing a fierce offensive in neighboring districts of Swat, where armed militants advanced despite the February deal, raising expectations of a renewed operation in Swat itself.
The operations were launched under US pressure to crush militants in the northwest, where Washington says that al-Qaeda, Taliban and other extremists pose the main terror threat to the West.
Panic and confusion spread through Mingora on Tuesday after the military issued — but then swiftly withdrew — an evacuation order, and clashes between security forces and the armed rebels broke out.
Khan said Taliban militants overnight seized control of several buildings and that four civilians were killed in the town — three in a mortar attack and one shot dead by security forces.
“They are patrolling in the streets in Mingora and occupying many official buildings, including a police station and a commissioner’s office, which houses offices of top police and administration officials in Saidu Sharif,” he said.
Local police said yesterday that the militants had vacated the buildings and dispersed into the mountains, similar to rugged terrain in neighboring districts where they are fighting guerrilla-style against the military.
The government was heavily criticized for the February deal to put 3 million people in the northwest under Islamic law in a bid to end the uprising, which instead saw the Taliban push further south towards the capital Islamabad.
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