Pakistan warplanes bombed Taliban hideouts in the Swat valley Friday where the government sent fresh troops with orders to "eliminate" extremists in an increasingly bloody confrontation, AFP reported.
Authorities slapped an indefinite curfew in a key area through which extra troops were to travel to the northwest region, a mountainous former ski resort that has been ripped apart by two years of unrest amid a Taliban campaign to impose sharia law.
But even as the helicopter gunships and jets blasted their targets, ground forces came under intense fire from militants, mostly young men who are highly motivated ideologically and frequently better paid than soldiers.
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.
"Mingora is totally under Taliban control," he added, his exhausted family carrying blankets and clothes but no food.
"They are roaming the streets with mortars and kalashnikovs. There are no security forces in sight anywhere."
The fighting has torpedoed a controversial February agreement between the government and an Islamist hardliner putting three million people under sharia law in return for peace, with Islamabad now saying it will fight to the end.
Fighter jets resumed strikes against suspected militant hideouts in Matta, Kabal and Khawazakhela towns of Swat district after a night of intense gunfire in those Taliban bastions, a local military official said.
"Our troops are advancing in Lower Dir and last night was the most intense shelling in Maidan in the past 12 days," he added, but was unable to confirm casualty figures.
Residents said mobile telephone and terrestrial lines were jammed along the route as troops and paramilitary forces rolled further north.
In a televised address, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani called for unity against extremists he said were risking the sovereignty of the nuclear-armed nation and had violated the peace deal.
He said the armed forces had been called on "to eliminate the militants and terrorists" to restore the "honour and dignity of our homeland."
President Asif Ali Zardari, in Washington for talks aimed at quelling the chronic unrest that has alarmed the United States, vowed military operations would last until "normalcy" had returned to Swat.
"It's a regional problem, it's a worldwide problem," he said after meeting key Congressional leaders urgently trying to complete a 7.5 billion dollar aid package to shore up the weak civilian government.
US President Barack Obama has placed Pakistan at the heart of the struggle against Al-Qaeda, and has branded extremists in the northwest as the biggest terror threat facing the West.
Critics, who said the February deal emboldened the Taliban, have welcomed the renewed military offensive, and the government has also been bolstered by public support.
A senior military official said the curfew was imposed to facilitate the deployment of troops, although he declined to say how many.
The fighting is triggering a humanitarian crisis as bedraggled refugees stream out of Swat in their thousands, some on foot leading goats and cattle, others crammed into cars with bags, blankets and bundles of clothes.
Salman Khan, speaking from Saidu Sharif -- the capital of Swat when it was an independent princely state -- said two children were killed and five others wounded when two mortar shells hit a house in his neighbourhood.
Those casualties could not be confirmed.
Khan, 20, said that armed Taliban came to his house and demanded burqas and women's shoes. "The Taliban wore burqas and female shoes, and disappeared when helicopters were flying above our area," he said.
Officials say more than 150,000 displaced people are living in temporary conditions.
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