Reporters see shattered Chittagong

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32604, 12 May 1971, Page 17

Reporters see shattered Chittagong

(Bn

MORT ROSENBLOOM,

of the Associated Press, through N.Z.P.A.)

CHITTAGONG, i May 11. I Overseas journalists today saw vast shell and fire damage, and evidence of a sweeping massacre of civilians by rebels, in Chittagong, the crippled key port of East Pakistan.

The Pakistan Army is now well in control of the city, but its troops occupied the important town of Coxa Bazar. 70 miles to the south, only five days ago, and patrols are still encountering snipers and infiltrators elsewhere in southern areas of the country. The port of Chittagong remains largely undamaged, but it is severely choked with cargo for lack of a labour force and the means to tranship inland. Key rail and road

| bridges were blown up by in mid-April, and I it may take months to repair i them.

In Chittagong itself, at the largest jute mills owned by the influential Ispahan! family. journalists saw the mass graves of 152 non-Bengali women and children executed in mid-April by rebel secessionist members of the Awami League. Bloody clothing and toys were still scattered on the ground. Responsible sources say that many thousands of West Pakistanis and Indian migrants were put to death in Chittagong between March 25, when the rebellion began and the Army's recapture of the town on April 11. Huge tracts of Bengaliowned buildings were pounded to pieces burned and sprayed with machine-gun fire as the Army advanced.

Army commanders say that about 33,000 armed rebels, including a defecting East Bengal regiment of troops and a force of policemen tried to hold Chittagong. But a single Army battalion managed to hang on until reinforcements arrived to help to retake the city. Shippers estimate that there is a backlog of 400,000 tons of cargo in the port, which normally can handle only 300,000 tons a month. The river is the only means to move goods in and out of the interior.

Evidence of a brutal war is everywhere in this pleasant garden city built around picturesque hills. Residents pointed out one burned-out block of flats where, they said Bengalis burned to death 350 Pathans from West Pakistan.

Reporters saw nine sevenI storey buildings, in which i lived 1000 Bengalis, riddled with holes and burned, Resi-

dents said that the Army had sprayed it with gunfire. For block after block, brick buildings were razed in Bengali residential and business areas. In non-Bengaii areas, homes and shops were burnt out completely, but they bore no evidence of shell damage. An estimated 15,000 nonBengalis lived in this city of more than half a million residents, but most who survived have fled.

Bengalis walking the unusually empty streets wear tiny Pakistani flags in their lapels for safety. Residents in Rajashahi, a city of the River Ganges, have described what they say was the killing of civilians by Indian Army regulars on April 14. Dr Akhtar Ahad, a Bengali property owner who returned last year from law studies in London, said that he survived an Indian firing squad by feigning death after being shot twice. "About 16 or 17 of them

asked us—five civilians—to come down from the house to a grassy compound, and they made us sit down/’ he said. “At a distance of five yards, they started shooting at us. Two were killed on the spot. I was hit in the chin and left thigh. Two others and 1 played dead, and they went away. I managed to crawl to the house."

He still has a severe chin wound, and walks with the aid of a crutch.

Dr Ahad said that he knew the soldiers who attacked him were Indian because his companion was the assistant director of intelligence for the area, and had confirmed information that a battalion of Indian Army regulars—not the para-military border security force —had crossed the Ganges to help the Bengalis. They wore olive green uniforms with no markings and spoke Hindi-influenced Urdu. There was no further means of identification.