THE DAILY MAIL, DECEMBER 14, 1971
TIGER IS WAITING FOR THE KILL
From Mail Correspondent in Dacca
Seated on a shooting stick at a street corner, the chief of Pakistan’s Eastern command vowed yesterday to fight for this city to the last man.
General A. A. K. Tiger’ Niazi made the pledge as the advancing, Indians were reported to be as close as six miles.
He said as stragglers from other pans of the country reached Dacca: “It doesn’t matter… It’s now a question of living or dying and ‘we shall fight to the last man.”
He also scotched any idea of surrender-as demanded in, a fresh appeal by General Sam Manekshaw, the Indian, Chief of Staff.”
It was General Manekshaw’s third call in a week and made to prevent ‘unnecessary loss- of life and damage’ in the battle for the Pakistan Army’s last major stronghold in the East.
The message said, in part: ‘Further resistance is senseless. My forces are closing in around Dacca and the garrison is” within range of our artillery. It should be the duty of all to prevent useless shedding of innocent blood.’
In the past 24 hours Indian infantry columns have advanced on the city from the North-West, the North and from Narsingdi, 25 miles to the North East,
And two battalions of paratroops have been dropped at Tangail, 50 miles to the north-west, and Bhairab Bazaar, 40 miles north-east.
John Webb at Khulna; East’ Pakistan, reports:’
Twelve hundred Pakistanis, chased 35 miles down the road from Jessore, are’ making a gallant stand at this river port.
Survivors of the 107th Infantry Brigade, bottled up in a garrison, have at last slowed the pace of the Indian assault.
I sat in a laundry 500 yards from Pakistan gunners yesterday for a briefing on the battle. The improbable temporary field headquarters belonged to Brigadier Sandhu Singh, C.O. of a. Brigade of the Indian 9th Division.
Protected
The laundry, protected from small-arms fire by a bend in the road was the only concrete building left in the village of Acra which I had reached in a communications jeep.
Less than 48 hours before, it had served Brigadier Hayat Khan, C. O. of the retreating Pakistanis.
As artillery shells whistled overheard Brigadier Singh, a bespectacled Sikh with a khaki sun visor strapped on to his turban, said: We cannot use our normal tactics of outflanking the enemy because there is a swamp on one side of the road and the wide River Bhairab on the other.
We have to advance up the stetch of road, which is only 30 yards wide at best, and which is heavily defended by bunkers and built-up defenses.
A surrender had been-arranged for the Pakistanis two nights ago. They were supposed to fire three flares, then bring their chaps across.
Detected
‘But nothing happened, and the fight goes on Ian Mather in New Delhi reports: Chinese troops are on the move, presumably to the border area with India.
Last night an Indian Foreign Office spokesman refused to say how many Chinese troops were involved or where the movements had been detected.
He said: We believe that this must be part of their effort designed to express political solidarity with Pakistan.
‘We still believe that China, has nothing to gain by enlarging this conflict’.
THE SHAME OF YAHYA’S ARMY
IT’S THE ATROCITIES, NOT THE DEFEAT,
A Special Report by John Webb
The disgrace of the Pakistan Army is not its defeat. The shame of the soldiers of Yahya Khan is their appalling misconduct towards the 75 million people they terrorized in the name of East Pakistan.
Somehow these excitable, affectionate Bengalis have kept their spirit in spite of the murders, the rape and the pillaging. They talk of ‘freedom’ with tears in their eyes.
On every’ road there is a trickie of homegoers, walking with pitifully small bundles on their heads, only an occasional woman in the party.
I met Sabed Ali Mandol, 40-year-old clerk, trudging along the road near Sabarsa, heading for his home in Jafarnagar with seven friends to prepare for the return of their family.
He told me how they fled to the interior because Pakistani troops stationed near the border went on a rampage.
‘We were beaten and kicked’ he said, They called us little monkeys.
Frontier
‘When three women were dragged off to be used by soldiers stationed at a frontier town, we sent our women and children away. When the Pakistanis began shooting everyone they could find, we had to run too.’
In Saharsa, headmaster Siddique Rahman, 31, said the villagers had been forced to build bunkers.
‘At 9 one morning they went the village of Goyra-Kagmari, which is very close to here, and they killed everybody. We counted 104 bodies. They killed the women and the children, including my mother and three of my nephews.’
The headmaster put his hand on the head of a young lad whose eyes had filled with tears as we talked.
‘He lost five brothers,’ he said.
The villagers were working mending thatched roofs and dismantling Pakistani bunkers for their wooden beams and sheets of galvanized iron.
I hitched a lift on a shiny red Honda motorbike, sandwiched between two Mukti Bahini freedom fighters.
When we stopped, Father Tedesco Sebastian, an Italian priest, who has been at Shimula mission for three years, confirmed that the Pakistanis kept up their terror campaign to the last.
Riddled
Two weeks ago a captain and three soldiers drove up in a jeep, made two villagers lie down on their backe in the road, and riddled them with machinegun bullets.
Near the market town of Jhikargacha, the villages caught up with Razakar leader after the regular Pakistani troops withdrew. They started face, slapping and punching him. They hit him with lathis and they threw stones. They stopped when he was dead.
Outside, the Awami League headquarters more than 300 villagers squatted happily in the sun for political speeches broadcast with deafening effect through four buge loudspeakers.
This was the execution place, the doctor said. They brought up to 21 people here every day, tortured them, then bayoneted them or cut their throats.
Then Dr. Abdur Rahim Khan and Kazim Abul Rasher, a tax inspector, led me to clearing in the jungle not 200 yards away.
The execution place was dreadfully quiet, and the air was foul. Older villagers and lots of children who had followed us, were standing silently.
Then the children moved ahead and called to me to come and see other burial pits. The most awful thing was that they knew where to look.