Fighting starts in Dacca

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32566, 27 March 1971, Page 1

Fighting starts in Dacca

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) NEW DELHI, March 26. Fierce fighting erupted in the East Pakistan capital, Dacca, today and heavy casualties were reported, said the United News of India. The agency said fighting had broken out in several other places in East Pakistan, but the heaviest fighting was in Dacca.

It was reported that six shiploads of West Pakistan troops had been put ashore at Chittagong and Chalna and others were also arriving in Dacca by air.

Troops in Chittagong fired on mobs ripping up railroad tracks leading to any Army compound and surrounding a ship believed to contain military supplies. Unofficial reports said 35 people were killed and 75 were wounded. The West Pakistan leader, Shiekh Mujibur Rahman called a general strike tomorrow and demanded that President Yahya Khan “order immediate cessation of military operations.” He accused the Army of unleashing a reigti of terror. Punjab trouble Violence also flared yesterday in West Pakistan, where a 10-hour curfew was clamped on the Punjab industrial town of Lyallpur after a day of clashes between

rampaging Left-wing demonstrators and police. At least 30 police were reported seriously injured in the textile centre about 80 miles from Lahore. The clashes began when the People’s Guards, the militant wing of Mr Z. A. Bhutto’s People’s Party, defied an official ban and marched through the streets. Radio seized In East Pakistan Dacca Radio announced that Army troops had seized control of the radio station supporting Sheikh Mujibur. After the regular morning English news programme, an announcement in Urdu and Bengali said a curfew was being enforced throughout Dacca. The radio ordered the people to remain indoors and said anyone violating the curfew would be shot on sight.

The announcement was made only hour? after President Yahya Khan returned to West Pakistan after 11 days of negotiations with Shiekh Mujibur and other political leaders, seeking to end the nation’s constitutional crisis.

West Pakistan Radio, in reporting the President’s arrival in Karachi, said all educational institutions and banks were ordered closed indefinitely in the Eastern Province and that citizens possessing arms were asked to surrender them immediately. Workers who had been refusing to report for duty as part of Shiekh Mujibur’s 24-day-long civil disobedience movement were told to return to their jobs within 24 hours or face court martial. Censorship The press, radio and television were placed under strict censorship, and all political activity has been banned.

The radio said any violation of orders by martial law authorities would involve a minimum penalty of 10 years imprisonment. Although martial law has technically existed in the country since March, 1969, when President Khan took over the Government from former President Ayub Khan, the East Pakistan civil administration had been taking orders from Shiekh Mujibur for the past week. A despatch from Shillong, the capital of the Eastern Assam State, said the Pakistan Army contingents had crossed into Indian territory at Belonia, in the remote Indian state of Tripura.