Since the fighting in Swat gained intensity after the Prime Minister’s address to the nation on Thursday, more than a million people have fled their homes in the war-torn district and moved to other cities and towns along with their families. People from other areas of Malakand Division are also leaving their homes and seeking shelter in other parts of the province.

On Sunday, reports from different sources informed that 50 to 200 militants have been killed within 24 hours of the military operation. A military curfew was enforced to restrict the movement of armed militants in the area. As the curfew was relaxed, some 400, 000 people moved from Swat to other towns and cities. This takes the figure of displaced people moving from Swat up to 1400, 000 while many of those left are also ready to move out for saving their lives.

To accommodate the displaced people from Swat, Dir, and other affected areas of Malakand, temporary camps are being set up in Buner, Sawabi, and Mardan. Families who have relatives in these cities are being let in by their kin while those who have no such support are bound to live in tents and make-shift homes erected in other cities and towns. Some families are moving out of the NWFP and moving to low-profile areas of Rawalpindi.

The displaced people are suffering from both physical hardship and emotional pain. As published in the Urdu daily Mashriq (May 11, 2009), a woman named Gul Saba Bibi told the media how she left home, after her husband fell victim to the shelling in the area, taking her ailing mother and autistic brother, to seek shelter in Peshawar city. But the organizers of relief camps told her that she’d be sent to Mardan for temporary residence. The affected people of the war are still awaiting the opening of a relief camp in Peshawar.