The intermittent firing and occasional artillery bursts continued through yesterday and early today, right up to the time the newsmen were expelled.
Helicopters wheeled overhead yesterday morning, apparently on reconnaissance. Four helicopters given to Pakistan by Saudi Arabia for relief work after last November's cyclone and tidal wave in East Pakistan were reported being used for the military operation in the province.
Yahya in West Pakistan
At 7 A.M. the Dacca radio, which had been taken over by the army, announced that President Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan had arrived back in West Pakistan and would address the nation at 8 P.M.
Shortly after 8 A.M., a black 1959 Chevrolet with an armed escort of troops in jeeps and trucks pulled up in front of the hotel. This convoy was to take Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his party to the airport to fly back to West Pakistan.
Mr. Bhutto, the dominant political leader of West Pakistan, opposed Sheikh Mujib's demands for East Pakistan autonomy.
It is generally accepted that his opposition, supported or engineered by the army and business establishment in West Pakistan, was what forced the crisis. Mr. Bhutto, who is aware that the Bengalis largely blame him for their present troubles, came into the lobby flanked by civilian and army bodyguards with automatic weapons. He looked frightened and brushed off all newsmen's questions with, “I have no comment to make."
At 10 A.M. the radio announced the new martial orders. Every time newsmen in the hotel asked officers for information, they were rebuffed. All attempts to reach diplomatic missions failed. In one confrontation, a captain grew enraged at a group of newsmen who had walked out the front door to talk to him. He ordered them back into the building and to their retreating backs, he shouted, “I can handle you. If I can kill my own people, I can kill you."
Crisis Reported Controlled
Shortly afterward, the military government sent word to the hotel that foreign newsmen must be ready to leave by 6:15 P.M. The newsmen packed and paid their bills, but it was 8:20, just after President Yahya's speech, before their convoy of five trucks with soldiers in front and back, left for the airport.
Just before leaving, the lieutenant colonel in charge was asked by a newsman why the foreign press had to leave. “We want you to leave because it would be too dangerous for you,” he said “It will be too bloody." All the hotel employees and other foreigners in the hotel believed that once the newsmen left, carnage would begin.
"This isn't going to be hotel,” said a hotel official, “it is going to be bloody hospital."
At the airport, with firing going on in the distance, the newsmen's luggage was rigidly checked and some television film, particularly that of the British Broadcasting Corporation, was confiscated.
