Tanks, Artillery Attack Dacca
DIRECT HITS ON UNIVERSITY & INDUSTRIAL AREAS.
Dacca. East Pakistan, March 29 (AP)
The Pakistan army attacked the Bengali Independence movement in Dacca without warning Thursday night and took the people by surprise.
The army’s American M24 tanks artilery and infantry destroyed large parts of East Pakistan’s largest city and provincial capital.
The chief targets were the university, the populous old city where Sheik Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League were strongest and the industrial areas on the outskirts of the city of 1.5 millon people.
Perhaps 7,000 persons were killed in the provincial capital alone.
Touring the still burning battle areas Saturday and Sunday, one found the burned bodies of some students still in their dormitory beds.
The tanks had made direct hits on the dormitories.
A mass grave had been hastily filled in at the Jagganath college: 200 students were reported killed in Iqbal hall. About 30 bodies were still lying on the ground and in the dormitories.
Troops reportedly fired bazookas into the medical college hospital but the casulity toll there was not known.
Thousands fled the city with only what they could carry. Some pushed carts loaded with food and clothes.
Only a few persons returned to government jobs despite the orders of the millitary regime.
Sheikh Mujib, whose electoral success in December encouraged him to seek autonomy for East Pakistan, was reported under arrest.
His campaign, which could have ended in the secession of East Pakistan, appeared to have suffered a serious setback.
Resistance to the army was reported negligibe. The people are obeying military orders to turn in weapons.
The Pakistan national flag is again flying from most government buildings. It had been replaced in the past 10 days by the green, red and yellow Bangla Desh-Bengali Nation-flag of independence.
In the old city, elderly men and women poked among the ruins of their homes. Army trucks and armoured cars patrolled the almost deserted streets. Cars were pasted with Pakistani flags to ward off fire from army patrols. Bodies sprawled in the streets. Shantytowns by the railroad had been burned down.
The people appeared stunned. Many were belwildered by President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan’s broadrast branding Sheikh Mujib and all supporters of the Awami League traitors.
The government went to extreme lengths to prevent a large contingent of foreign newsmen from witnessing the violences.
Thirty-five foreign correspondents were detained in the Inter Continental Hotel and only this photographer and a British correspendent evaded the army cordon.
At the Dacca airport troops frisked me and seized my flim and notes. At Karachi, police forced me to strip, my luggage was searched and unexposed flim was seized.
INDIAN REQUEST TO U THANT I
ndia asked secretary-general U Thant on Monday to use his Initiative to assure restraint by Pakistan and prevent the massacre of unarmed people’ in East Pakistan.
Samar Sen, the India ambassador to the United Nations, said he made the request in a private meeting withu Thant at U.N. head quarters.
He said he suggested also the possibility of International efforts to provide relief for people in East Pakistan, and for refugees coming out of that area. He added that Thant said he would take the suggestions under consideration.
Indonesian Observer, 30.3.1971