Residents also reported, heavy artillery, tanks and ground troops in hundreds moving towards Buner as forces sought to drive the Taliban back into the Swat Valley. The army estimates there are 400-500 Taliban militants hiding in Buner.
The US on Tuesday designated Maulana Fazlullah, the chief of Pakistani Taliban, as a global terrorist and slapped sanction against him.
"The operation will continue till the last Taliban militant is eliminated," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told media persons at the Islamabad airport on his return from the US. Malik's remarks come as Pakistani army and fighter jets resumed their pounding of Taliban positions after a nine hour pause ordered to lead the trapped civilians reach safer areas.
At least 22 Taliban militants were killed and scores wounded as Pakistani war planes kept up their relentless strikes on the bases of Tehrik-e-Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in restive Waziristan, while police shot dead five other radicals in Karachi on Saturday.
The much anticipated peace talks between the Taliban and the United States might not happen as well, a US official said, as the Special US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan left Qatar without any talks with the Afghan insurgent group.
This will be probably for the first time since the 9/11 attacks that the representative of a duly elected Afghan government and the Taliban would be meeting face-to-face for peace talks.
A United States drone crashed in the restive South Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan on Sunday, with the Taliban claiming that its militants had shot down the unmanned spy plane.
'We already have Indian Islamic extremist groups working in India, and secondly, if Pakistan slides even further, India will be sharing a border with the Taliban,' says Ahmed Rashid, perhaps the world's foremost expert on the Taliban.
Some commanders have refused to pledge allegiance to Akhundzada, according to interviews with Taliban commanders and officials.
Foreign policy is always a work in progress and ups and downs are built into foreign policy process. What is permanent is national interest. Hopefully, this year, which will also witness general elections in the country, will also clear clouds in the foreign policy horizon, observes Rup Narayan Das.
The United States has said that Taliban is not an enemy of America, a move seen as the latest effort of the Obama administration to send an olive branch to the terrorist outfit that ruled Afghanistan before 9/11.
Acknowledging the killing of its leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, the Afghan Taliban have announced Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada as his successor.
Almost all mosques in villages in Buner district are being used by the Taliban to recruit local residents for their cause of enforcing Sharia or Islamic law in the Malakand division, which includes Swat, and the rest of the country, media reports said on Monday.
Mullah Naqibullah, the commander of Taliban's militia in Kandahar and his close colleague Mullah Abdul Qayum were reportedly among those arrested.
Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud was among six militants killed in a US drone strike on Friday in the lawless North Waziristan tribal region.
A confidential Spanish defence ministry report has alleged Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency helped arm the Taliban in 2005 for assassination plots against the Afghan government, media reports said. The confidential report, obtained by Cadena Ser radio and posted on the station's Web site, also alleges the Inter Services Intelligence helped the Taliban procure roadside bombs.
Against the backdrop of a spate of attacks on election meetings and campaign offices ahead of the landmark May 11 polls, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Hakimullah Mehsud has said his group is focussed on ending the country's democratic system.
Rejecting General David Petraeus' claim that thousands of Afghan Taliban have either 'laid down' their arms or moving towards doing so, Mullah Omer-led Taliban vowed continuing their war until the establishment of Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani Taliban on Monday vowed they would again target teenage rights activist Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt last year to become a frontrunner for the Nobel Peace prize.
Taliban leader Mullah Mansour was killed in a United States airstrike.
A Pakistani journalist has petitioned the Supreme Court to bar the civilian government and the military from making any contacts or conducting negotiations with the Taliban, saying such an act is forbidden by the Constitution.
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