ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan military said yesterday that life in the retaken northwestern city of Mingora was returning to normal even as some civilians there fled to refugee camps. Pakistani authorities also reported heavy clashes yesterday on the outskirts of a key Taleban stronghold as troops closed in on militants in the Swat Valley, where residents spoke of fear and deprivation.
Aid workers from the International Committee of the Red Cross who entered Swat on Sunday for the first time since the beginning of the recent military action said they were alarmed by the “dire” humanitarian situation for the trapped civilians. “There is no running water, no electricity, and food is scarce,” Daniel O’Malley, who led the Red Cross team into Swat, said in a statement. Pascal Cuttat, the Red Cross head of mission in Pakistan, said the people of Swat “need greater humanitarian protection and assistance immediately.”
In intense fighting with the Taleban in other parts of northwestern Pakistan, the military killed 18 militants while losing two soldiers, it said yesterday. Separately, an explosion tore through a bus station in the same region, killing four people and injuring eight. “This is not a city anymore; this is a battlefield,” said Orangzeb Khan as he left the Swat Valley’s main city of Mingora with his wife, four children and ageing mother. “How can I keep my family here?”
Many of the 20,000 residents remaining in the city of 300,000 swarmed the streets to buy food from a few opened shops after government forces recaptured it at the weekend from militants after street-by-street fighting.
However, some families, like Khan’s, hastened to leave the town for refugee camps in the neighboring Swabi and Mardan districts. “We have seen enough fighting, enough starvation,” he said. “We will return only when both the Taleban and military disappear from here.” Although much of the region has been cleared of the militants, the government forces were still facing “stiff resistance” in some areas, including Charbagh, about 15 kilometers northeast of Mingora, the military said. “Normalcy is returning at Mingora at a fast pace,” the army claimed.
Although government officials have refused to talk on the civilian casualties during the recent fighting, the residents claimed the numbers could be in the thousands. In Peochar, a side valley of Swat where the militants had set up their command and control system, government troops destroyed a newly constructed tunnel and “huge cache of arms,” the military said.
— With input from agencies
