693 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড Armed liberation patrols in jeeps are the only motor vehicles seen in the streets. Some bicycle powered rickshaws remain but their drivers gather listlessly at street corners for lack of riders. As elsewhere, many stores and businesses were owned by West Pakistanis, all of whom have disappeared from sight. A liberation leader told me that West Pakistanis were being held in confinement, but one of the "freedom-fighters" in the streets put it differently. "We have destroyed the "Salaamers" who supported the Army and supplied them," he said. It is not known how many West Pakistanis were in Rajshahi when the fighting started. Liberation leaders believe there are about 300 troops holding positions in the centre of the two-mile square cantonment, an area of buildings surrounded with barbed wire. Freedom fighters are ranged in position around the camp. Resistance They are wary of venturing inside two days before the city itself fell a mob of resistance fighters, ran forward with a group of soldiers emerged from the cantonment carrying a white flag. Some of them were carrying weapons, but the freedom fighters apparently did not expect that the Pakistanis would to use them. When they got into the open machine guns opened up. Liberation leaders said they did not have the exact figure of casualties in the incident, but described the losses as heavy. Liberation leaders say the troops have three-inch mortars and other heavy weapons in the cantonment. They have not been firing them, however, apparently to save their ammunition. The soldiers have been reported to be digging in bunkers. The Liberation forces have cut off utility and water lines leading into the camps. There were no Pakistan Air Force planes in the sky above Rajshahi when I visited the area, but the evidence of their strikes could be seen in areas surrounding it. On the highway leading into the city a truck lay across the shoulder of the road, tires shot out and riddled with holes from the 50 caliber cannon carried by US-built F86 sabre jets that the Air Force has based in Dacca. Villagers said the driver escaped but that an old woman on the road was killed in the attack. In another nearby village a mud-walled mosque was hit by what appeared to be napalm. The walls were blackened but still standing and its wooden doors and everything inside including its copy of the Koran, were charred crisps. One person was killed and three wounded at the mosque. Jet Attack Liberation leaders said the jets had strafed a market in one village and also along the banks of the Ganges where civilians congregate to cross into India. The riverbed is several miles across.
