Shortly before dawn most firing had stopped and as the sun came up an eerie silence settled over the city, deserted and completely dead except for the noise of the crows and the occasional convoy of troops.
But the worst was yet to come. At midday, again without any warning, columns of troops poured into the old section of the city where more than a million people live in a sprawling maze of narrow, winding streets.
For the next 11 hours they proceeded systematically to devastate large areas of the old town where Sheikh Mujib had some of this strongest support among the people in Dacca.
English Road, French Road, Naya Bazaar, City Bazaar-meaningless names but home to thousands of people-were burnt to the ground.
"They suddenly appeared at the end of the street,” said one old man living in the French Road Naya Bazaar area. “Then they drove down it firing into all the houses."
The leading unit was followed by soldiers carrying cans of petrol. Those who tried to escape were shot. Those who stayed were burnt alive. About 700 men, women and children died there that day between midday and two o'clock.
The same was repeated in at least three other areas, all of them covering anything up to half an square mile or more.
As they left the soldiers took those dead they could away with them in trucks and moved on to their next target. Police stations in the old town were also attacked.
"I am looking for my constables,” a police inspector said on Saturday morning as he wandered through the ruins of one of the bazaars. “I have 240 in my district and so far have found only 30 of them all dead." O ne of the biggest massacres of the entire operation in Dacca took place in the Hindu area of the old town. There the soldiers made the people come out of their houses and then just shot them in groups.
This area, too, was eventually razed.
The troops stayed on in the old city in force until about 11 p.m. on the 26th. Driving about with local Bengali informers.
The soldiers would fire a flare and the informer would point out the house of staunch Awami League supporters. The house would then be destroyed-either with direct tank or recoilless rifle tire or with a can of petrol.
Meanwhile, troops of the East Bengal Regiment were being used in the suburbs to start moving out towards the industrial areas of the city-Tongi and Narayanganj against centers of Leftist support for the Sheikh.
Firing continued in these areas until early on Sunday morning but the main bulk of the operation in the city was completed by the night of the 26th-almost exactly 24 hours after it began.
