Militants, police clash amid flooding
<p>A child is carried by a relative as they alight from a small boat after leaving their flooded home in Muzaffargarh, Pakistan, on Tuesday.</p>
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) - 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 early today.
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 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 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 has affected some 20 million people - or one in nine Pakistanis.
The floods began three weeks ago and don't appear to be easing. Tens of thousands of villages are under water, and officials fear more flooding could happen. Some 1,500 people have died.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was headed to 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 U.N. appealed last week for $459 million for immediate relief efforts and has received 40 percent of that so far, said U.N. spokesman Maurizio Giuliano. Another $43 million has been pledged.
Aid groups have complained that the response has been too slow and not generous enough, and the U.N. warned that many victims have yet to receive any help.