MARDAN, Pakistan — Pakistan's army vowed Friday to eliminate militants from a northwestern valley. But it warned that its underequipped troops face thousands of Taliban extremists who have seized towns, planted bombs made from pressure cookers, and dragooned children to be suicide bombers.
As air force jets roared overhead and gunbattles raged, terrified civilians from the Swat Valley and neighboring districts accelerated their exodus, with U.N. and Pakistani officials predicting 1 million refugees will soon burden the turbulent Afghan border region.
The army formally announced Friday that an offensive was under way. It has drawn praise from U.S. officials alarmed at the Taliban's recent advance to within 60 miles of the capital, Islamabad.
Washington describes the militants as an existential threat to nuclear-armed Pakistan itself, as well as to U.S. chances of destroying al-Qaida or of winning the war against their insurgent allies in neighboring Afghanistan.
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"The army is now engaged in a full-scale operation to eliminate the militants, miscreants and anti-state elements from Swat," said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, chief army spokesman. "They are on the run and trying to block the exodus of civilians from the area."
There are doubts about the ability and resolve of the army and the government to sustain the kind of grinding counterinsurgency warfare needed to defeat the extremists, whose rhetoric resonates widely in a Muslim nation deeply skeptical of U.S. goals in the region.
Abbas sought to counter portrayals of the military as ill-trained, saying they had learned a lot in eight years of fighting along the border. But he said they need helicopters, surveillance drones and night-vision equipment, which the U.S. is scrambling to provide.
Pakistan's army is fighting to wrest Swat and two neighboring districts from militants who dominate the adjoining tribal belt along the Afghan frontier, where U.S. officials say al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden is likely holed up.
The army announced its offensive after Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the government would wipe out groups trying to "take Pakistan hostage at gunpoint." Battles and bombing runs by helicopters and jets have been going on all week.
Abbas said Friday that more than 140 militants and two soldiers had been killed in Swat in the last 24 hours — roughly doubling the number of casualties reported so far.
The latest figure included 100 militants killed in bombardments of remote training camps and arms dumps. Abbas didn't explain how the body count was done. Fighting in neighboring Buner and Lower Dir killed another 31 militants and three soldiers, he said.
Officials say they are unable to confirm accounts from fleeing civilians of innocents killed and wounded by indiscriminate gunfire and shelling. Abbas said troops were advancing slowly to try to minimize such collateral damage.
But the stream of civilians seeking safety appeared to have intensified. On Friday, the U.N. refugee agency said provincial officials had told them 500,000 had fled, were on the move or were trying to flee.
