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The UN refugee agency said nearly 1.5 million people have fled their homes in Pakistan this month, saying that fighting between government forces and Taliban militants is uprooting more people faster than probably any conflict since the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s.

“It has been a long time since there has been a displacement this big,” said UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond, trying to recollect the last time so many people were uprooted in such a short period.

“It could go back to Rwanda,” Mr Redmond said, referring to the 1994 massacre of ethnic Tutsis by the majority Hutus in the African country. “It’s an enormous number of people.”