MINGORA - Pakistan's military said Wednesday that big towns could be won back within days but warned it could take another two months to defeat the Taliban in a blistering air and ground offensive.
Pakistan launched the assault to "eliminate" Islamist militants in three districts of the northwest in late April, under heavy US pressure to stem the advance of Taliban fighters to within 100 kilometres (60 miles) of Islamabad.
"The big cities and big towns will stand clear within three days' time," military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP on a hill overlooking Mingora, the main town in the Swat valley that the army claims to control.
Describing the Taliban as an elusive enemy that shied away from pitched battles during a six-week offensive in the northwest, Abbas said it "may be another two months when we can say the complete area is fully secured".
Pakistan claims that more than 1,300 militants and around 86 soldiers have died in the operations, which UN officials say have also displaced up to 2.4 million civilians, now sheltering in government-run camps or with relatives.
Visiting US special envoy Richard Holbrooke said that Washington was seeking an extra 200 million dollars in emergency aid to help the displaced.
"If the Congress approves and we're hopeful, this will bring to well over 300 million dollars the amount of money the United States is giving just for the refugee crisis in Pakistan," said Holbrooke.
Coupled with a 7.5 billion dollar aid bill, the US administration had dramatically increased funding to Pakistan, being "committed" to helping the country "strengthen democracy and to defeat militants," Holbrooke said.
Pakistan announced further military successes Wednesday, saying forces had secured Charbagh, located 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Mingora and described as one of the most important Taliban strongholds in Swat.
Security forces also "successfully secured Pir Baba and Bhai Kalay" in the neighbouring district of Buner, where there has been heavy fighting for weeks.
Few details given out by the military can be independently confirmed because the area of operations are largely closed to journalists and aid workers.
President Asif Ali Zardari stressed there was a long fight ahead.
"To say the war is won is too soon. We have to win the hearts and minds of the people. Once we win the hearts and minds we can say the war is won," he told a news conference with Holbrooke in the national capital Islamabad.
An AFP reporter saw heavy damage in downtown Mingora at Green Chowk, once dubbed "bloody chowk" because of the bodies -- headless, hanged and shot -- that used to be dumped in the roundabout by Taliban.
Shops were reduced to rubble, sides of buildings collapsed and debris littered the ground. Elsewhere, there were broken windows around the electricity and water plants.
The shops still standing were shuttered and not a soul was on the streets with Mingora under curfew, although Abbas estimated that 30,000 people still live in the city out of 300,000 -- the vast majority of whom fled.
Major General Ijaz Awan, commander of the Mingora campaign, said that the displaced might be able to return within two weeks but that soldiers would need to patrol for at least a year to protect the city from returning Taliban.
Pakistan has vowed to hunt down the commanders of the Taliban uprising in Swat, but military chiefs are not totally certain of their whereabouts.
The government has slapped a 600,000-dollar price on the head of firebrand Swat Taliban commander Maulana Fazlullah, wanted dead or alive, for masterminding the nearly two-year uprising in the valley to enforce sharia law.
The army launched operations in Swat's neighbouring districts of Lower Dir on April 26 and Buner on April 28, before extending the offensive to Swat on May 8, nearly three months after the government signed a peace agreement.