বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড This man and two other estate managers who escaped with him asked that their names not be used because of their fear of reprisal against British families still in East Pakistan. The three evacuees reported that a Convoy of nine trucks that the Pakistani radio contended had been carrying arms and ammunition from India and Had been destroyed by Pakistani planes was in fact a collection of empty trucks in the yard of a tea eState. Authoritative reports indicate that perhaps 20 to 25 percent of the people are left in such towns as Dacca, the capital, and Chittagong and Comilla. Smaller centers are also largely deserted, Dacca had a population of about 1.5 million, Chittagong about 400,000 to 500,000 arid Camilla about 100,000. In the eastern part of East Pakistan the thump of artillery fire can be heard every day in virtually every sector. After every guerrilla attack or harassment by the outnumbered and outgunned resistance troops, the Pakistani Army appears to be inflicting reprisals on the civilian population. "The bloody cowards!" said a young Bengali lieutenant who escaped the army attempt to annihilate his battalion of the East Bengal Regiment at Comilla. "We give them fronts to shoot at. We are in uniform. But they attack civilians instead." The secessionist army is desperately short of trained officers, arms, ammunition, vehicles and basic supplies. Some of the men are barefoot. The heaviest weapon the secessionists have in any numbers is the 3-inch mortar, although they have captured a few heavy guns. The Pakistani military are using jet fighter-bombers, heavy artillery and gunboats-mostly supplied by the United States, the Soviet Union and Communist China. Pakistani charges that the Indian Government has been sending troops and weapons to East Pakistan are not borne out by, this reporter's observations. No Indian troops were seen in the East Pakistani units, The basic weapons are old Enfield and Garand rifles and some Chinese-made automatic rifles and machine guns—which the Bengalis have either captured or had brought with them when they escaped from their units. Fewer than 10 percent of the 300,000 men in the Pakistani armed forces were Bengalis. Nearly all of those who were not killed by the West Pakistani troops in the first days have joined the secessionist army and constitute its only trained elements. The best available figures indicate that the trained core consists of some 3,000 members of the East Bengal Regiment, which was a regular unit, and some 9,000 members of the East Pakistan Rifles, a paramilitary unit one of whose duties was to man the observation posts on the border with India. The rest of the secessionist force is made up of armed policemen home guards, other poorly trained local militia and raw recruits.
