85 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ ৩৮। ঘৃণ্য হত্যাকান্ড নিউইয়র্ক টাইমস ১০ মে, ১৯৭১ THE NEW YORK TIMES, MA. Y 10, 1971 SICKENING SLAUGHTER By Malcolm W. Browne Rajshahi, Pakistan, May 10 One of the six foreign newsmen allowed into East Pakistan by the Pakistani government for a tour with official escorts The crushing force of West Pakistan's military operation against the Bengali separatists has apparently destroyed all serious armed opposition in East Pakistan. This city, which used to have a population of 100,000, stands on the east bank of the muddy, sluggish Ganges River, with India on the opposite shore 3,000 yards away. Border towns like this were political strongholds of the now-banned separatist Awami League, which won a sweeping victory in the national legislative election Dec. 7. The national army, made up mostly of Punjabis from West Pakistan; struck against the separatists throughout East Pakistan on March 25, and by mid-April, apparently, the army's campaign was virtually completed: Last-ditch opposition in border regions was swiftly squelched, and although army patrols still draw occasional sniper fire, the eastern wing of this divided nation seems firmly under control. The cost to all concerned has been agony. Newsmen have seen tens of thousands of leveled or gutted buildings. In the towns, concrete walls are pocked by hundreds of bullets where firing squads did their work. Bodies were dumped in community wells, and general desolation testifies to the ferocity of events. Precisely how it all happened is not apparent, since testimony is totally conflicting depending on the point of view of the witness. The army and the civilian "Peace Committees" it has established throughout the cast region say that the bulk of the destruction and the slaughter was perpetrated by the rebels, or Indian troops infiltrated across the border. But newsmen often are approached in the streets by Bengalis who slip up and whisper a few words before darting out of sight of the ever present Peace Committee members. Most of the Peace Committee members, to whom the army has delegated a certain measure of civil administration, are Moslem Biharis, who moved to Pakistan from India when the two nations were carved out of British India in 1947.
