There was no way to verify General Abbas’s account; reporters and most outsiders have been blocked from the areas. The Pakistani government and the military, which has largely stood by as the Taliban insurgency has surged forward in recent months, have been under intense American pressure to take action against the militants.

Image Pakistani refugees on Friday at a camp in Mardan, in the North-West Frontier Province, after fleeing fighting between the Pakistani Army and Taliban militants. Credit... Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

A government official reached at his home in Mingora said many militants had been killed this week when Pakistani helicopter gunships attacked an emerald mine that sits on the approach to Mingora. Still, the government’s position was unchanged, the official said; it was clinging to only a small corner of Mingora. The mayor’s office and police headquarters were still in Taliban hands.

The official said electricity and water in the district capital were both gone. “Thousands of people are leaving,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear that he would be killed.

A Pakistani who spoke to his family in Mingora on Friday said they had confirmed that the Taliban remained in control of the city. He said the roads into the capital had been booby-trapped with land mines, and that in some places, like Matta, a Taliban stronghold, militants were blocking civilians from leaving.

Another Pakistani in Swat, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Taliban fighters had begun to loot local banks, including three on Thursday.

Some civilians fleeing the area said the Pakistani Army had imposed a round-the-clock curfew across much of the embattled area, preventing thousands of people from leaving. Those people would flee at the first chance, the refugees said.