Pakistan braces for flood of displaced from Swat

By Zeeshan Haider

MARDAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan is bracing for its biggest ever displacement of people, as many as 800,000, as a military offensive against Taliban militants in their stronghold in the Swat valley appears imminent.

Expanding Taliban influence in nuclear-armed Pakistan has spread alarm at home and abroad and will be a core issue when U.S. President Barack Obama meets his Afghan and Pakistani counterparts in Washington later on Wednesday.

Convoys of military vehicles carrying troops and artillery were seen heading towards Swat as authorities in Mardan, the second biggest city in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), search for sites for camps for people uprooted by fighting.

"Initially, we were estimating that 100,000 to 200,000 people would leave their homes but now we are expecting displacement of 600,000 to 800,000," Khalid Khan Umerzai, commissioner of the Mardan division in NWFP, told Reuters on Wednesday.

"This will be the biggest displacement of Pakistanis since independence," he said, adding about 1.6 million people live in Swat.

In February, the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, estimated up to 600,000 people could be uprooted because of fighting in Pakistan's northwest.

Mardan division is the main staging point for people fleeing the fighting in Malakand where Swat is located, and the government has set up three camps for the uprooted people and is opening three more.

A February peace pact aimed at ending Taliban violence in Swat is in tatters and thousands of people fled from Mingora, the region's main town, on Tuesday after a government official said fighting was expected.