Panicked refugees pour out of Pakistan's troubled North Waziristan

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By Jibran Ahmed BAKA KHEL Pakistan (Reuters) - Their belongings piled high on buses, rickety donkey carts and tractors, thousands of refugees poured out of Pakistan's North Waziristan on Thursday, terrified by both state troops and Taliban insurgents fighting for control of the troubled region. Pakistan announced the start of a full-on military offensive on Sunday to quash an increasingly assertive Taliban insurgency in the ethnic Pashtun region, the base of some of the country's most feared al Qaeda-linked militants. Troops have since encircled the mountainous region on the Afghan border and fighter jets have pounded villages and militant hideouts, sending a wave of panicked refugees spilling into the nearby region of Bannu, as well as Afghanistan. For tens of thousands of people now massing in camps and private houses in Bannu, living under army control was as frightening a prospect as living in the Taliban's shadow.




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