Islamist militants attacked police posts in Pakistan’s northwest and killed two civilians active in an anti-Taliban militia, challenging a security establishment straining under a national flooding disaster, police said yesterday.
The attacks came as the UN said an estimated 4.6 million flood victims have yet to get any shelter, despite aid workers’ attempts to distribute tents.
The floods have submerged tens of thousands of villages, killed about 1,500 people and affected 20 million others, authorities say.
PHOTO: EPA
Hundreds of thousands of cattle — the livelihoods of many villagers — have also drowned.
A group of militants first killed two members of a militia in the Adezai area of Peshawar as they headed to pray at a mosque late on Tuesday, Peshawar police chief Liaqat Ali Khan said.
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 Sarband area of Peshawar. The two sides exchanged fire for about an hour before the militants retreated to Khyber, Khan said.
He said several militants were killed, but there were no police casualties.
The clashes suggest Islamist insurgents are not abandoning their campaign against the state despite the flooding that began three weeks ago. In fact, they may be taking advantage of the government’s weak and distracted status.
“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 military, meanwhile, has about 60,000 troops dealing with flood relief. Many of those soldiers would normally be battling insurgents or holding territory they had already cleared.
The UN warned yesterday that many flood victims have yet to receive any help.
That includes about 4.6 million in eastern Punjab and southern Sindh provinces who still need shelter, said Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“There has been an improvement in funding. Donors are realizing the scale of the disaster, but the challenges are absolutely massive and the floods are not over,” Giuliano said.
“The size of [the area affected by] this disaster is equivalent to Austria, Switzerland and Belgium combined. That’s pretty scary,” the OCHA spokesman said.
So far, food rations and access to clean water have been provided to about 700,000 flood survivors, UN officials said.
The UN has warned that up to 3.5 million children could be in danger of contracting deadly diseases carried through contaminated water and insects in a crisis that has disrupted the lives of at least one-tenth of Pakistan’s 170 million people.
In a possible sign of respite, authorities said there were signs monsoon rains could ease.
“We cannot see any new [weather] system developing that could produce heavy rains,” said Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, head of Pakistan’s Meteorological Department.
“Now rivers on the upstream are returning to normal, but in Sindh it will take another 10 days,” he said.
Meanwhile, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was headed to Russia yesterday for a regional summit.
He was expected to stay only a few hours before returning home.
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