The UN says hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled the fighting in recent days [AFP]

The hideout in Gatt Puchar, a mountainous region in the Swat valley, was taken on Tuesday morning, with helicopters being used in the assault, military sources said.

Troops were dropped into the area, which has so far proved to be impenetrable for ground forces.

There has been no confirmation of Fazlullah's whereabouts following the attack.

Fazlullah is the son-in-law of Sufi Muhammad, a local religious leader  who negotiated a deal with the government under which a stricter interpretation of sharia would be implemented in the Swat valley.

Another air attack on Tuesday killed at least eight people in a house in Sara Mhora in South Waziristan, near the Afghan border, according to intelligence sources.

The attack is thought to have been carried out by an unmanned US drone.

General Athar Abbas, Pakistan military spokesman, said that 751 opposition fighters had been killed so far during the military offensive in Lower Dir, Buner and Swat valley.

Twenty-nine security personnel had also been killed in fighting which began less than two weeks ago.

'On the run'

Abbas said that a "search and destroy operation" was now under way.

On Monday, Rehman Malik, the country's interior minister, said that Pakistan's armed forces have put Taliban fighters "on the run".

"The operation will continue until the last Taliban is flushed out," Malik said, adding that the offensive was "continuing successfully".

But Muslim Khan, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, told Al Jazeera that the military was "lying" about their successes.

"They simply want to impress the Obama administration, because that's where they get their money from," he said.

The escalation in operations comes as the United Nations warned of a worsening humanitarian crisis, with about one million people thought to have been forced from their homes since August last year.

Mass displacement

It is unknown whether Mullah Fazlullah was in the hideout at the time of the offensive

"It's a Pashtun genocide," Rustam Shah Mohmand, former ambassador to Afghanistan and a security expert at the Institute of Policy Studies, said.

"How can you assess the success of an operation that has resulted in the displacement of one million people so far, that has caused the flattening of whole villages?

"The scars will not heal for many, many years to come.

"There will be a tremendous amount of hatred against the government because it's believed that the government perhaps created an environment in which a military operation had become so necessary.

"Pakistani Taliban would never have posed any danger to the state. That is grossly exaggerated. They do not even hold Buner.

"A small security force could have defeated them. Instead, the option of resorting to full-scale military operation was used by the government.

"It is a very, very disproportionate reaction."

Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, has said the Taliban poses an existential threat to the country and has urged civilians to leave the Swat valley area to avoid casualties.

The offensive in the Swat valley, located 130km northwest of Islamabad, the capital, is seen as a test of the government's resolve to get to grips with an increasingly powerful Taliban.

But some analysts have said the government must get results quickly and minimise civilian suffering or else it risks growing public opposition.

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