President Pervez Musharraf cited the stepped-up militancy in northern regions like Swat to justify imposing a state of emergency on Nov. 3, a move critics say was designed to silence opposition forces weary of his military rule.
Also yesterday, police said they were investigating the slaying of three supporters of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in an attack on her party's office in southwestern Pakistan.
Wajid Akbar, the district police chief, said the attack occurred Saturday morning when gunmen raided the office in Naseerabad, about 150 miles east of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.
In the Swat valley, Major General Nasser Janjua told reporters that since launching an offensive in the area last month, his 20,000-strong force had managed to retake all the towns seized by the militants, driving 400 to 500 of them into the Piochar side valley.
"We have bottled them upward and we want to take a good toll of them," Janjua said at an army base in Mingora, the region's main town.
The rest of Fazlullah's force, initially estimated to be about 5,000 strong, apparently hid their weapons and melted back into the local population.
In Mingora, a bustling market town that was hit by militant mortar fire during the fighting but was never under militant control, there was no obvious sign of disruption from the fighting.
However, tense-looking guards watched over the army base from sandbagged posts on the roofs of adjacent buildings.
Business at the town's upscale hotels, recently built to cater for Pakistani and foreign tourists drawn by Swat's fine mountain scenery, has reportedly dried up. Janjua said it might take a year before travelers begin to return.
Troops at another base set up on a golf course in Kabal, a nearby town which had been in militant hands, appeared relaxed. Several artillery pieces which the army said had been used to pound rebels in the hills lay silent.
However, the journalists were not taken to forward positions closer to the most recent clashes.
