IN DACCA : CITY UNDER ARMY CONTROL
Awami League Forms Provisional Govt. (Edtor’s Note: The following dispatch was writen by AP correspondent Arnold Zeitlin
who left Dacca Sunday).
Colombo, March 28 (AP)
AT LEAST five to seven thousand people are believed to have been killed in and around Dacca during two nights and a day of fighting as the Pakistan Army suppressed Sheik Mujibur Rahman’s 25 day defiance of the military regime.
Dacca was Sunday completely under army control.
Reliable sources said that the Sheikh was held in custody along with most of the leaders of the now banned Awami League, which had swept to an overwhelming majority in the December general election.
Thousands people were fleeing Dacca which remained under curfew, although it had been lifted for a few hours Sunday.
Some government workers reported to their jobs on Saturday as orderred by the army, but most of them did not show up or had fled Dacca.
Radio Pakistan said Sunday night that ‘calm now prevails’ throughout East Pakistan, but Sheikh Mujibur Rahmans’ followers said they were winning the threeday-old civil war and had formed a provisional government.
With no relaxation of press censorship in Pakistan. There was no way to confirm the confilicting reports.
The radio controlled by the central government of President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan said “No untoward incidents ocurred in Dacca and other major cities in the province.”
At the same time, it indirectly acknowledged for the first time since the fighting broke out that there had been trouble in the port city of Chittagong which unconfirmed reports had said was held by Sheikh Mujib’s followers.
“The situation in Chittagong continues to improve and is well under control;” the radio said. It formerly had not made any reference to trouble in the city.
Sheikh Mujib’s clandestine ‘Free Bangla Radio’, however, said that the Pakistan navy shelled Chittagong Sunday night to soften resistance.
The radio said troops who had arrived by ship three days ago from Karachi finally disembarked but had to fight their way into the city, firing machineguns.
The radio also claimed that the Shiekh’s supporters were in control of the towns of Rangpur, Jessore and Comilla. It did not mention about other cities.
The official radio of Yahya Khan’s government said the situation in East Pakistan was so well under control that all banks would reopen Monday and that a curfew would be relaxed in Dacca, the capital, fom 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.
It also said that the provincial martial law chief, Lieutenant General Tikka Khan, whom Indian reports had earlier said was dead, had met with senior civil servants and the consul-general of Nepal and Japan.
In another development, the Sheikh’s clandestine radio announced the formation of a provisional government in Bangla Desh Bangali Nation-and it appealed to other countries to extend immediate recognition.
Austaralian Broadcasting Commission correspondent Don Hook said Sunday that he and 34 other foreign newsmen expelled from East Pakistan had their notes and film confiscated by Pakistani authorities.
“You will have only your memory to rely on,” he quoted one security official as telling the newsmen”
Hook, who is based in New Delhi, said the correspondents were searched three times-when they left Dacca early Saturday, when they arrived in Karachi and again when they left Karachi for foreign destinations.
He said that the search of entire group was so thorough at Dacca that it took about hours to complete.
Hook said the correspondant were detained in the Dacca intercontinental Hotel when fight broke out in the city late Thursday, but were not mistreated.
Radio Pakistan has said Sheikh was arrested at 1.30 on Friday from his residence.
Hook said some of the newsmen who flew to Karachi from Dacca tried to seek asylum in colombo when the Pakistani air craft stopped at Colombo airport for refueling.
But he said the plane flew to Karachi with all the correspondents who were then allowed to leave for other countries.
Hook said as he drove towards Dacca airport huge fires could be seen in the distance, towards Dacca university. All the road were heavily guarded by troops he added.
In Beirut, Newsweek correspondent Loren Jenkins, one of newsmen expelled from Dacca said the army’s action Friday was an exercise in terror designed to frighten people. The army apparently thought such a show of force would keep them from continuing their campaign of non-cooperation on with the government.
Jenkins said automative weapons fire began in Dacca about midnight Thursday and became general about an hour later, followed by artillery fire which seemed to be aimed at the university campus, apparently because the students were the only ones thought to have army of any strength.
Bengalis tried to stop the army’s advances by making barricades from chopped down trees or over turned cars, but Jenkins said these were bulldozed out of the way.
Reference : Indonesian Observer, 29.04.1971