Desperation In Pakistani Hospitals, Camps

Thousands Flee, Others Trapped By Fighting In Taliban-Controlled Region Called "War Of The Country's Survival"

(AP)  Civilians cowered in hospital beds on Saturday and refugees looted U.N. supplies - all of them desperate for relief from the fighting that has engulfed a northwestern valley as troops and warplanes try to drive out Taliban militants.

The prime minister, directing millions of dollars to help the residents of a region where backing for the central government has sometimes been tenuous, described the offensive launched this week as a "war of the country's survival" but said the military alone could not be victorious in the Swat Valley.

The army "can only be successful if there is support of the masses," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who authorized the Swat offensive on Thursday, told a news conference after an emergency Cabinet meeting.

Further south, a suspected U.S. missile strike killed nine people, mostly foreigners, in another militant stronghold near the Afghan border, officials said. The identities of the victims were not immediately unclear.

The army said it killed as many as 55 more Taliban fighters in Swat on Saturday.

Encouraged by the United States, Pakistan's leaders launched the full-scale offensive this week to halt the spread of Taliban control in districts within 60 miles of the capital. Pakistan's army is fighting to wrest Swat and neighboring districts from militants who dominate the adjoining tribal belt along the Afghan frontier, where U.S. officials say al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is likely holed up.

But the fighting has caused the flight of hundreds of thousands of terrified residents, adding a humanitarian emergency to the nuclear-armed nation's security, economic and political problems. The government is appealing for international aid to ease the plight of the multitude of weary, traumatized people who have abandoned their homes in search of safety.

Witness accounts indicated that scores of civilians have already been killed or injured in the escalating clashes in Swat and the neighboring Buner and Lower Dir districts.

Even the medics are gone: Only three doctors remained Saturday at the hospital in Swat's main town, Mingora - all of them working at full stretch.

Riaz Khan, a 36-year-old schoolteacher, his wife and two daughters occupied four of the beds, shrapnel wounds on their arms and their legs bandaged. Khan said his other two daughters were killed three days earlier when a mortar shell hit their home near Mingora.

"We buried our daughters on Thursday when the army relaxed the curfew," he told an Associated Press reporter. "We reached the hospital only with great difficulty."

Nisar Khan, one of the three doctors left, said about 25 war-wounded were among the 100 patients.

(Left: Pakistani doctors treat a victim of violence in Mingora, capital of Pakistan's Swat Valley, on Friday, May 8, 2009. Pakistani jets bombed suspected militant positions as thousands fled in terror and those trapped appealed for a pause in the fighting so they could escape.)

Taliban militants seized much of the area under a peace deal, even after the government agreed to their main demand to impose Islamic law in the region.

U.S. officials likened the deal to a surrender. Pakistani leaders said the agreement's collapse had opened the eyes of ordinary citizens to the extremist threat.

The army says it is reinforcing the 12,000 to 15,000 troops in Swat as they take on 4,000 to 5,000 militants, including small numbers of foreigners and hardened fighters from the South Waziristan border region.

On Saturday, an AP reporter saw jet fighters flying over Mingora and later heard explosions from further up the valley.

The military said its helicopter gunships attacked militant hideouts in Mingora and killed 15 fighters. An estimated 30 to 40 more died in smaller clashes elsewhere, the statement said. Four soldiers were wounded.

Provincial Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain blamed the Taliban for the deaths of innocents.

"The militants are using civilian population as a human shield and they have dug trenches in civilian areas," Hussain said at a news conference in Peshawar. He said they were firmly in control of Mingora.

However, officials have given no details of civilian casualties, apparently for fear of a public outcry that could make it hard for the army to press ahead.

South Waziristan has been the scene of numerous suspected American missile attacks in recent months, including Saturday's strike in the Tabai area.

Two intelligence officials said several missiles struck a disused hospital building, killing six foreign militants, and a tunnel in a nearby mountain, killing three local fighters.

The officials said field agents were still trying to determine the identity of the victims and whether they were affiliated with al Qaeda. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly to the media.

Just south of the war zone, around the city of Mardan, crude camps have mushroomed. On Saturday, the desperation of the refugees was laid bare with television footage showing dozens of men making off with blankets and tins of cooking oil. A policeman thumped one looter with his rifle butt while a man wearing a T-shirt bearing a U.N. logo urged others to return their loot.

"When people are desperate, it's hardly surprising that things like this happen," said Ariane Rummery, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency.

The agency has registered some 150,000 people fleeing the latest fighting. Pakistani and U.N. officials say the total number displaced may reach half a million.


From "Washington Unplugged" (5/08/09): CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan and CBS News national security consultant Juan Zarate discuss instability in Pakistan and Afghanistan with Slate Magazine's John Dickerson. To watch click on the video player below.

[sjc_1]

We are going to have to get the Taliban, nothing else will do.

[lehnahund]

The Pakistani army is going to have to do the same thing against the civilians who are giving a blind eye to the Taliban and it looks like they figured this one out.
Posted by tmittelstaed at 2:42 AM : May 10, 2009

sitting in your comfortable american house, where nothing really can happen to you and then attacking civilians in pakistan of more or less cowardice is hard to swallow.

just shut your trap.

what kind of people are you???????????

[tmittelstaed]

For too long the civilians in Swat have been fence-sitters. If the citizenry were unified in their opposition to the Taliban they would be informing on them right and left to the government and the Taliban would have been taken out long ago. The situation there is similar to what went on in the South during the US Civil War. One of the big reasons the Civil War continued as long as it did was the ordinary citizens of the South were supporting the Confederate armies with provisions and goods as well as hiding them. When General Sherman got in charge he started destroying the civilians holdings in the South and that soured the civilian population on supporting the Confederate army, and once the citizenry support dried up, the Confederate army fled. The Pakistani army is going to have to do the same thing against the civilians who are giving a blind eye to the Taliban and it looks like they figured this one out.

[gravyboat45]

Peace in the Middle East will not come from America. It will come from one man. That man is the one the world needs to fear. They will not, but they should.
Posted by debinok1

Rush Limbaugh?

Oh SHIZNIZZLE! We're screwed...

[gravyboat45]

Whats the difference between CBS and the compliant "journalism" of government controlled media in Indonesia under Suharto?
Posted by HusseinMalaise

Indoor facilities?

[debinok1]

Peace in the Middle East will not come from America. It will come from one man. That man is the one the world needs to fear. They will not, but they should.

[hungry1968-15]

No. I'm not that stupid.
Posted by NunesPaul_ at 5:40 PM : May 9, 2009




You appear to be a conservative, which leads me to ask the question.

[hungry1968-15]

Hey CBS moderator, I wanna ask you a question, why comments cheering Obama remain and comments bashing Obama are erased?
Posted by NunesPaul_ at 4:47 PM : May 9, 2009






Are you sure you're not hitting the "refresh" button, instead of "submit"?

[Marie Zarankevich]

One cannot negotiate with insanity. -- That IS what we are looking at there.

[summarex]

Obama sure has walked into this one. The Pakistanis broke the truce at his instigation and now the US will be blamed for it. I wonder who advised Obama that the US had to insist that Pakistan renew the hostilities in Swat. I'll bet it was one of those lovely sorts with one foot in Washington and one foot in Jerusalem.