Militants exploiting the flooding chaos in Pakistan clashed with
police overnight, authorities said Wednesday, as desperately needed
international donations for the millions of victims picked up pace three
weeks after the deluge began.
Pakistan senior meteorologist Arif
Mahmood said floodwaters won't fully recede until the end of the month,
and existing river torrents were still heading to major cities such as
Hyderabad and Sukkur in the south. But he said there were no heavy rains
forecast this week — "good news for aid agencies involved in the rescue
and relief operations."
So far the floods have submerged tens of
thousands of villages, killed around 1,500 people and affected 20
million others, authorities say. The floods hit first in the northwest,
wiping out much of its infrastructure, and then the bloated rivers
gushed toward the south and the east, displacing millions more people.
About a fifth of Pakistani territory has been affected.
The
northwest is the epicenter of Pakistan's fight against al-Qaida and the
Taliban, and attacks by militants late Tuesday and overnight
highlighted the threat they still pose.
A group of militants first
killed two members of an anti-Taliban militia in the Adezai area of
Peshawar as they headed to pray at a mosque late Tuesday, said Liaqat
Ali Khan, Peshawar police chief.
In the hours after, dozens of
militants from the Khyber tribal region, which lies near Peshawar and
along the Afghan border, attacked police posts in the Peshawar's Sarband
area. The two sides exchanged fire for about an hour before the
militants retreated to Khyber, Khan said. Several militants were killed,
but there were no police casualties.
"As the police force is busy
in rescue and relief work for flood affectees, militants tried to take
advantage of the situation to attack Peshawar, but the police force was
fully alert and vigilant," Khan said.
The Pakistani Taliban have
urged citizens to reject any foreign aid, saying it will only be stolen
by the political elite in the impoverished nation of 175 million.
The
U.N. appealed last week for $459 million in international aid for
immediate relief to Pakistan. Aid groups have complained that the
response so far has been anemic, but U.N. spokesman Maurizio Giuliano
announced Wednesday that more than half of the money — 54.5 percent —
had come in.
"This is very encouraging," he said.
Still, he
said major challenges remained, especially preventing what he feared may
be "a second wave" of death from disease and hunger. He also said
rescue workers were trying to procure more plastic sheeting and tents
for an estimated 4.6 million people in Punjab and Sindh who have no
shelter.
The civilian government's standing has been badly damaged
by its chaotic response to the floods, though many observers note that
few governments could have been able to handle such a large-scale
disaster well.
President Asif Ali Zardari was in Russia on
Wednesday for a regional summit. He was expected to stay only a few
hours before returning to his deluged country. An earlier multi-day trip
to Europe just as the disaster was unfolding severely damaged Zardari's
already poor reputation.
The military, meanwhile, has some 60,000
troops dealing with flood relief. Many of those soldiers would normally
be battling insurgents or holding territory they had already cleared.
U.S.
Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson said Tuesday that it was too soon
to understand what impact the disaster would have on the Taliban and
al-Qaida in Pakistan, but that it was a concern for Washington. The U.S.
has pushed Pakistan to eliminate militant hideouts it fears are being
used as rest stops for insurgents engaged in the war in Afghanistan.