| শিরোনাম | সূত্র | তারিখ |
| ১২৪। মুক্ত যশোরে বাঙালী | নিউইয়র্ক টাইমস | ৯ ডিসেম্বর, ১৯৭১ |
THE NEW YORK TIMES, DECEMBER 9. 1971
BENGALIS DANCE IN LIBERATED' JESSORE
Jessore, Pakistan. December 8. The Bengalis danced on the, roofs of buses. They shouted independence slogans in the streets. They embraced, they cheered they reached out in spontaneous emotion to clasp the hands of visitors from other lands.
For Bengalis, today (December 8) was “liberation day” in Jessore-the strategic city in East Pakistan that, for eight months until yesterday (December 7) had been under the control of west Pakistani troops, who had come last spring to put down the Bengali rebellion.
The “liberators” are Indian troops. They are almost as happy as the Bengali secessionists whom India supports, but they did not have much time today to stop and celebrate, as they continued to chase the retreating West Pakistani forces southeast toward Khulna.
The Indians, too, waved and smiled and posed for pictures from the, tops of their armored personnel carriers and tanks while they waited, four miles from Jessore. for orders to move farther down to the Khulna road.
"They are fleeing in panic.” an infantry captain of the Seventh Punjab Regiment said of the Pakistani troops. “They have got good equipment and defenses but their morale is in their boots.""
Most of the Indian troops are as different from the Bengalis as the predominantly Punjabi troops from West Pakistan were because the Indian soldiers are also heavily Punjab. But cultural gaps between the Bengali secessionists and their Indian backers have been temporarily erased.
The jubilant Bengalis have pitched in to sustain the Indian drive by working with Indian troops to throw pontoon bridges across rivers whose permanent bridges are being blown up by the Pakistanis as they pull back.
A major bridge has been expertly demolished on the main road from the Indian border to Jessore which is 23 miles inside East Pakistan. Five of the six spans of the steel and concrete bridge lic in the kabathani River, as does the railway bridge 200 yards downstream.
The Pakistanis blew these bridges two night ago as they retreated to Jessore.
The scene today at the site which is the town of Jhingergacha, nine mills from Jessore, looked like a cross between a bucket brigade and the building of the pyramids.
On the muddy, bank below the blown road bridge, hundreds of Bengalis in long rows passed logs down the line to be laid as planking for the approaches to a new pontoon bridge. As they worked in machine like precision brwany troops from the army engineers inflated huge pontoons with a compressor, carried them through kneedeep much to the water and then began placing the aluminiam spans across them. In four hours, the bridge was finished..
