Pakistanis dodge Taliban roadblocks

THOUSANDS of terrified Pakistanis dodged Taliban roadblocks to flee fighting yesterday between the army and insurgents in a northwestern valley, streaming into refugee camps and crowding hospitals with their fatigued and hungry children.

According to the UN, tens of thousands have fled their homes in recent days from the Swat Valley where a militant-government peace pact collapsed this week. The exodus adds to more than 500,000 already displaced by fighting in Pakistan’s volatile border region with Afghanistan.

The violence flared just as Pakistan’s embattled president was appealing in Washington for more help to reverse the extension of Taliban-held territory to within 90 kilometres of the capital, Islamabad. The US has welcomed Pakistan’s fresh military action.

Yesterday, several thousand men, women and children – most riding cars, buses and tractors, but some of them on foot – took advantage of an easing in the army curfew to pour through Swat’s main town, Mingora, in search of safety.

The ramshackle convoys were rolling up hours later at a string of camps set up by Pakistani authorities and the UN in the city of Mardan and neighbouring towns. Hospitals in Mardan treated dozens of civilians with serious gunshot and shrapnel wounds, children among them.

At the Tuberculosis Hospital in Mardan, hundreds jostled to register for a tent and emergency supplies.

Yar Mohammad, a 50-year-old stone mason, said he had “poured his blood” and his best years into the development of Swat, once a haven for tourists drawn to its Alpine-like scenery.

“Now I am seeing the buildings that I have helped to construct being blown up and destroyed,” he said, blaming both the Taliban and the authorities.

Some residents complained that the Taliban had blocked their escape.

Ayaz Khan said he loaded his family into his car yesterday in the Kanju area of Swat only to find rocks, boulders and tree trunks laid across the roads, forcing him to turn back. “I am helpless, frustrated and worried for my family.”

The military claimed to have killed more than 80 militants in Swat and the neighbouring Buner region on Wednesday. Officials have said nothing about civilian casualties. But those fleeing the region bore tales of families wiped out by stray shells.

Fazl Hadi, a doctor at another hospital in Mardan, said it had admitted 45 civilians with serious gunshot or shrapnel wounds in recent days and was bracing for many more.

Among the youngest patients was Chaman Ara, a 12-year-old girl with shrapnel wedged in her left leg.

She said that she was wounded last week when a mortar shell hit the truck taking her family and others out of Buner.

She said seven people died, including one of her male cousins, and pointed out the nearby bed where the boy’s wounded mother lay prone. “We mustn’t tell her yet. Please don’t tell her,” she whispered.

Witnesses said armed Taliban militants were again roaming the streets of Mingora, Swat’s main town, yesterday. Troops were launching artillery and airstrikes on militant targets in the area.

General Ashfaz Parvez Kayani, the chief of Pakistan’s army, said it would commit enough of its resources to “ensure a decisive ascendancy over the militants” in the country.