Tens of thousands of citizens have fled a Taliban-held valley being bombed by warplanes, in fighting that Pakistan's prime minister calls a "war of the country's survival."
Pakistan's army said they killed dozens of militants in fighting in Swat Valley Saturday. A suspected U.S. missile strike in South Waziristan, near the Afghan missile, is believed to have killed nine people.
The United Nations is warning that a humanitarian crisis is occurring in the troubled country as desperate refugees took to looting one UN camp for its supplies.
Pakistan's newly launched offensive against the Taliban was a response to pressure from the U.S. government, CNN's Reza Sayah, told Â鶹´«Ã½net on Saturday.
"Certainly there was a lot of pressure from high-ranking military officials, but the Pakistani government is doing its best to frame this offensive as their war against the Taliban," he reported from Islamabad.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the offensive is a "war of the country's survival," but the military alone can not be victorious in the Swat Valley.
The army "can only be successful if there is support of the masses," he told a news conference after an emergency Cabinet meeting.
Sayah said 200,000 people have already fled the area and 300,000 people are making their way out. Refugee camps are stationed just south of the war zone, around the city of Mardan.
Some 150,000 people have been registered by the United Nations refugee agency since the fighting erupted.
With the current amount of people fleeing the violence added to the half a million people already displaced along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border from previous military clashes, the crisis has the potential to displace one million people, said Sayah.
"That's exactly why humanitarian groups are saying if something isn't done very quickly you're going to have a disaster on your hands," he said.
When Gilani announced the offensive on Thursday he pledged US$12 million in aid for the refugees, but Sayah reported that refugees aren't getting it.
"Often times Pakistan has not been able to get this money quickly to these areas and that's the challenge they face," he added.
Displaced residents have become restless and even started looting supplies at refugee camps, Sayah said.
On Saturday, television footage showed dozens of men making off with blankets and tins of cooking oil.
The Pakistani government is appealing for international aid to ease the plight of the residents who are at refugee camps.
Threat of Taliban in Pakistan
Meanwhile, Pakistan's army said it killed as many as 55 Taliban fighters in Swat on Saturday.
Pakistan launched the full-scale offensive Thursday to stop the spread of Taliban control in districts within 100 kilometres of the capital and in the adjoining tribal belt along the Afghan frontier, where the U.S. government says al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is likely hiding.
About 12,000 to 15,000 Pakistani troops are in the Swat region, battling 4,000 to 5,000 militants.
Taliban insurgents captured most of the area after they singed a peace deal with the government allowing them to impose Islamic law in the region.
Pakistani officials said the failure of the agreement has exposed the danger of extremism in the country.
According to the Associated Press, witness accounts indicated that many civilians have already been killed or injured during the fighting in Swat and the neighbouring Buner and Lower Dir districts.
However, the government has provided no details of civilian casualties, apparently for fear of a public backlash against the army.
As fighting escalates, there has been more suspected American missile strikes in South Waziristan.
Two intelligence officers, who remained anonymous, said the strikes have killed nine militants. Field agents are trying to identify the victims and determine if they had links to al Qaeda.
With files from The Associated Press
