Dacca Guerrillas Start Offensive
Martin Woollacott
Dacca, October 17. New guerrilla groups infiltrated into the Dacca area in the last three weeks have begun a vigorous offensive, disrupting the calm which followed the bombing of the Intercontinental Hotel early in September. The new groups tried to shell Dacca airport. At Dacca’s satellite port they exploded bulk gas pipes and burnt a huge quantity of jute awaiting shipment. As part of their campaign to close educational institutions, they bombed the university medical school after warning students to leave. One girl missed the warning and was seriously hurt.
The guerrillas are also thought responsible for the killing, four days ago, of Mr. Abdul Monem Khan, who was Governor of East Pakistan under President Ayub Khan. Some non-Bangladesh university groups had hoped he would return to politics. But some believed the killing may have been an act of private revenge. In a development ominous for the United Nations, a grenade was hurled two nights ago at their headquarters in a Dacca suburb. But it did not explode. The most worrying incident for the military authorities was the attempted attack on the airport. The three-inch bombs, in fact, fell on the cholera laboratory. There was much perplexity about this until it was realized that the laboratory is in a direct line with the airfield, and that the shells, which must have been fired without a forward observer to correct the aim, had fallen only 600 yards short of the field.
As a result of these and other incidents the army and police in Dacca are tense and on full alert. Residents say more troops are in the city than a few weeks ago, and there are more checkpoints on roads, and guards or important buildings. Outside the immediate Dacca area, other groups in the last few days have attacked road and rail links to Mymensingh. Four days ago guerrillas blew up a railway bridge between Tungi and Narsingdi north of Dacca. The engine and some carriages tumbled into a river. According to one report, Pakistan newspapers confirm the attacks on the bridge, but say casualties on the train were very few.
Sources here say the new groups are made up largely of students. They are assigned to areas where their families often still live. Some, indeed, have. never left the city since March except for two weeks of training. Money to support them is collected from sympathizers by political groups who take no part in military action. The political groups arose spontaneously, and are not particularly well organized. But they manage to put out a clandestine newspaper and distribute Bangladesh leaflets printed in Calcutta. Reports about continuing army brutality reinforce public sympathy for the Muki Bahini effort, in spite of accidents like the injured medical student and civilian casualties from shelling in border towns.
Indeed, it is an index of some popular attitudes towards the army that rumors attributing the shilling to Pakistani guns are circulating. If anything is nonsense this is yet such reports are widely believed. Elsewhere in the province, the Pakistani Army seems to have made little progress in eliminating areas of Mukti Bahini strength. These were already clearly marked on maps in June. The guerrillas continue at least to survive, and in some areas to prosper – in the Gopalganj region south of Faridpur, in the Madhupur Forest area 40 miles north of Dacca, in western Noakhali, and in a wide border strip west of Rangpur, ‘as well as in three or four smaller area north and south of the Capital.
Reference: The Guardian, 18 October, 1971