YAHYA KHAN’S ARMY ISOLATED IN BORDER CITIES
- PAKISTANIS GAINING STRENGTH
New Delhi, April 6 (AP) Pakistan President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan’s army to be increasingly isolated in the border cities of secessionist Eastern Pakistan.
After 12 days of civil war, a general picture of the strength of the opposing forces was emerging, based on eyewitness accounts of foreign evacuess and reports reaching the neighboring India from various sources.
Consistent in the reports was that the West Pakistan dominated army was in control of at least the major cities in the province, Dacca and Chittagong.
But elsewhere in the 55,126 square mile province, and even on the outskirts of Dacca and Chittagong, the followers of Sheikh Rahman were reported to be in control.
The latest confirmation of army’s tenous position came from Americans who were among 119 foreign nationals evacuated to Calcutta by ship from the beleaguered port of Chittagong.
The evacuees said the army was in control of the central part of the port but that five miles (08 km) out of the city the East Pakistanis held sway.
They said most East Pakistanis had already left Chittagong for the rural areas.
“My guess is they will make a stand,” one American said. “Already they control most of the countryside.”
Within Chittagong, he said the army held the city by “brute force and terror.”
“Civilians are being shot, harassed and beaten,” he said, “We saw bodies and smelt the stench of death. There is indiscriminate looting and burning.”
Foreign correspondents who have visited East Pakistani towns held by Sheikh Mujib’s followers near the Indian border the past week have reported that army units had retreated to their cantonments, in scenes resembling U.S. cavalry stands in forts of the American West during the 19th century.
With internal river transportation disrupted in the province, the army, according to Indian Intelligence reports, was having logistical problems that were being complicated by a fuel shortage.
Despite the army’s difficulties neutral observers in New Delhi did not anticipate the Pakistan government would give up its attempts immediately to quell the Independence movement in the East.
They said that as long as the army held on to Dacca airport and Chittagong they could bring in needed supplies and troop reinforcements.
But they added there would be increasing difficulty in getting the men and material to other parts of the province as the monsoon gained strength later this month.
PAK VESSEL HARASSED BY INDIAN WARSHIPS?
Pakistan claimed Tuesday for the second time within a week that Indian warships had harassed a Pakistani vessel while the martial law government announced the surrender of one of the close advisors of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, American and British educated Dr. Kamal Hussain.
According to the official radio, two Indian warships ‘harrased’ the passenger vessel Safine-E-Arab which was carrying pilgrims from Mecca to the eastern port of Chittagong.
The radio said the ship was harassed about 150 miles (240 km) from Chittagong.
According to the broadcast, the ship was instructed to continue on course and later reported the Indian warships had left. The radio gave no further details.
Meanwhile, according to the radio, martial law authorities announced the surrender of Hussain, aged 33, the lawyer and chief constitutional advisor of the leader of the now banned Awami League. He disappeared on the night of March 25 when the army cracked down in East Pakistan.
Hussein had been one of Sheikh Mujib’s three advisors negotiating with the staff of President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan.
Martial law authorities in Dacca also officially denied that Awami League and student leaders had been executed. The administration said no Awami Leaguers were executed, and added “Some persons may have lost their lives in clashes between the authorities and unruly mobs.”
Non-Awami League political leaders in East Pakistan continued to meet Gen. Tikka Khan, martial law administrator, in the provincial capital.
Among the most prominent was former foreign minister Hamidul Huque Chowhdury publisher of the Pakistan Observer daily in Dacca.
In a statement, the publisher urged India to ‘refrain from pursuing a hostile policy.’
AMERICANS EVACUATE
A total of 299 Americans, mostly wives and children of an American relief and government workers in East Pakistan, have arrived in Karachi in three special flights from Dacca since early Monday. An American consulate spokesman said Tuesday. At least another 320 were expected to arrive early Wednesday and Thursday, the spokesman said.
A group of 26 American men, women and children evacuees from strife-torn Dacca arrived in Tehran exhausted Tuesday after a 30-hour stop over in Karachi.
SYLHET CAPTURED
The Indian government radio and Indian news agencies said that the northeastern provincial city of Sylhet, only 20 miles (32 km) from the Indian border, had been captured by the East Pakistanis and that the army had retreated to their cantonment.
The radio said that the northern towns of Rangpur and Mymensingh also were ‘by and large in the hands of Sheikh Mujib’s’ for correspondents to visit areas controlled by the army. Censorship was imposed throughout the nation.
ref. The Indonesian Observer, 7.4.1971