Pakistan, Taliban faulted for civilian deaths

Pakistan said Tuesday troops were locked in fierce street battles with Taliban fighters in the northwest where a rights group accused both sides of inflicting high civilian casualties.

A United States-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Taliban militants of using "human shields" and Pakistan military strikes for causing a high loss of civilian life during fighting in the northwest.

HRW quoted residents as saying that Taliban militants laid landmines in Mingora, the capital of the Swat valley, and "prevented many civilians from fleeing, using them as 'human shields' to deter attack."

"Pakistani forces appeared to have taken insufficient precautionary measures in aerial and artillery attacks that have caused a high loss of civilian life," said the New York-based watchdog.

Civilian casualties

The group urged Taliban militants -- who have fought to impose sharia, Islamic law, in Swat for nearly two years and last month advanced further towards the Pakistani capital, precipitating the offensive -- to allow civilians to escape.

"The Taliban's use of landmines and human shields is a sorry addition to their long list of abuses in the Swat valley," HRW Asia director Brad Adams said in a statement.

"They urgently need to let civilians leave areas of fighting."

HRW said that even after Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Kayani issued "appropriate instructions" to minimize collateral damage, it received "several accounts of high civilian casualties in Pakistan military attacks."

The Taliban's use of landmines and human shields is a sorry addition to their long list of abuses in the Swat valley

Brad Adams, HRW

US offers $110 million

The United States on Tuesday offered Pakistan $110 million to help people driven from their homes by fighting in the Swat Valley and said it was trying to redress 30 years of "incoherent" U.S. policy toward the nuclear-armed country.

The White House said the United States would provide $100 million in humanitarian aid such as food, tents, radios, generators and other items and that the U.S. Defense Department would give a further $10 million in unspecified assistance.

"Providing this assistance is not only the right thing to do but we believe it is essential to global security and the security of the United States and we are prepared to do more," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters.

Clinton also described the last three decades of U.S. policy toward Pakistan as "incoherent," saying that the United States had worked with Pakistan to arm the Mujahideen fighters who helped drive the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980s only to effectively abandon both countries.

She said U.S. President Barack Obama was determined to forge a long-term partnership with Pakistan to confront al Qaeda militants who are believed to have fled Afghanistan, where they plotted the Sept. 11 attacks, to Pakistan.

"I think that it is fair to say that our policy toward Pakistan over the last 30 years has been incoherent," Clinton told reporters at the White House, implicitly criticizing the policies of her own husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton. "I mean, I don't know any other word to use."

Providing this assistance is not only the right thing to do but we believe it is essential to global security and the security of the United States and we are prepared to do more

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

On May 8, 35 people, including 14 children and four women, were killed when army mortar shells and missiles struck the Shahdra and Wathke neighborhoods of Mingora, the rights group said.

"Reportedly none of those killed were Taliban fighters," it said.

Quoting witnesses, the group said at least three women and eight children were killed in air strikes against the Swat town of Matta on May 11.

With the area a closed military zone, from which journalists and human rights monitors are barred from entering, HRW said it was impossible to independently verify the information.

Civilian displacement

Pakistan has been pressing a furious offensive in the northwest districts of Swat, Buner and Lower Dir in what the government has hailed a fight to "eliminate" Taliban militants from the area.

The U.N. refugee agency said 1.45 million people have registered as displaced since May 2, pushing to more than two million the number of people forced to flee fighting in northwestern Pakistan since last August.

I would say that it is one of the worst displacement crises

Rashid Khalikov, U.N.

Rashid Khalikov, director of the U.N. humanitarian office in New York, appealed for more funds to help the massive numbers crammed into dusty camps or in relatives' homes, seeking refuge from an anti-Taliban assault.

"I would say that it is one of the worst displacement crises," said Khalikov, who is currently visiting Pakistan.

"We have this massive number of people that got displaced and the absolutely horrible speed with which this happened. They got displaced into a hostile climate zone, they are not used to living in these kind of temperatures."