THE TIMES, DECEMBER 13, 1971
GUERRILLAS SAID TO BE FIGHTING INSIDE DACCA
From Henry Stanhope Defense Correspondent
Calcutta, Dec 12.-About 435 foreign nationals, 185 of them British, flew safely to Calcutta today from Dacca while Indian troops, who crossed the Meghna river on Friday, were said to be just 20 miles from the East Pakistan capital and “advancing fast”.
The evacuees, many of them women and children exhausted after Five nights of bombing on the city, said that the morale of the Pakistan force in Dacca was shattered. Troops clacked into lorries were “not quite sure where to go”. As many as 1,000 Mukti Bahini (Bangladesh guerrillas) were said to be Fighting in the city already.
There is little news about the success of yesterday’s airborne assault on Dacca’s outer defenses by men of one of India’s two parachute brigades, despite Indian claims that a Pakistani counter-attack had been repulsed “with heavy casualties”.
The evacuees were flown in by three RAF Hercules transport aircraft from Singapore, one of them returning to pick up a second load. All the British were flown on to Singapore, but more than 1000 of the others are staying in Calcutta hotels tonight, their only luggage being light hand baggage which they were allowed to bring on the overcrowded aircraft.
This was the seventh attempt to get most of the foreign nationals out of Dacca. They told of women and children returning tearfully from the airport two or three days ago after one attempt had been abandoned because of a sudden air raid.
They confirmed that an orphanage was destroyed several days ago by five 5001b to 1,0001b bombs intended for the railway yards 105 yards away, with the deathaccording to the Pakistani authorities-of 300 boys. A German television cameraman said that he saw 20 bodies but he believed that more were buried under the rubble.
However, the cameraman, Herr Jens Uwe Schemer, added that most of Dacca was still untouched and that bombing had been aimed exclusively at military targets.
Reports circulating in Dacca put the number of Pakistani soldiers defending the city a between 20,000 and 30,000 with up to 1,000 Mukti Bahini already fighting there with small arms.
Herr Schemer said that at a recent press conference outside the Intercontinental Hotel the Pakistani Chief of Staff was optimistic about the city’s defense “but the really clever generals clearly do not see much chance. We have been out looking at defensive preparations and we have seen nothing really prepared to defend the place”.
Only a few foreign nationals are now lest in the city, including a number of press correspondents and Red Cross workers