Half of the Bajaur population has migrated to safer places and hundreds of families, including children and women, continue exodus amid the ongoing military operation against Taliban militants while the government's help to the victims is barely discernible."Out of 0.6 million population, over 300,000 people have migrated from the area," volunteers and locals said.
A pamphlet dropped from helicopters asked the people of the Taliban-infested areas to immediately leave, saying the government action was only against the terrorists.
The pamphlet said the roads would remain open so the people could shift but asked the migrating people to stop their vehicles and raise their hands when they see helicopters in the air and avoid sitting under trees or else they would be hit.
The Al-Khidmat Foundation's Fazl Mehmood, looking after all relief activities in the district, said they had properly registered and accommodated 60,000-plus affected people in their camps in Munda alone and provided temporary stay to over 100,000 migrants.
"We have set up relief camps at Balambat, bus terminal in Timergara, Talash, Munda and Chakdara," he said.
In addition, hundreds of families are staying with their relatives in Lower Dir and other districts and thousands of victims have moved to down districts.
From Batkhela, the headquarters of the Malakand Agency, to Munda, volunteers were raising funds for displaced people at numerous places. The affected families -- could be seen sitting in the open, under-construction markets, bazaars, bus stands, at roadsides and in camps in a miserable condition -- from Khazana, situated six kilometres off the district headquarters, to Timergara and to Munda town bordering Bajaur Agency, waiting for shifting to plain areas.
Women, children and elderly people with their luggage walked for hours to leave the troubled agency, believed to be the hotbed of hardcore militants.
Tractor-trailers, vans, pick-ups, trucks and cars carrying the victim families and their household items were seen between Munda and Timergara.
Residents of almost all villages along the road had set up camps, offering drinking water to the migrating families. As Al-Khidmat Foundation and other groups and individuals had provided free transport service to facilitate the migration, the transporters, as usual, had increased their fares manifold to fleece the distressed people.
As choppers and fighter aircraft shelled various towns, people fled to save their lives. "Several persons were killed and houses damaged by shelling," Gul Sher Khan, a resident of Daag area and currently accommodated in government high school Munda camp, said.
Another resident of the same area, Roshan Ali, said the entire Dag village had been vacated. The NWFP government set up this camp but people complained of food shortage, drinking water and absence of toilet.
While taking notes and talking to displaced people, this correspondent was surrounded by scores of victims who wanted to 'enlist' their names for relief items, as they considered this scribe a government official registering names for providing relief items.
Around one dozen people along with their household items were herded in every tent without the facility of power in the hot weather.