DACCA NEARLY ENCIRCLED Refugees jam city as troops advance

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32787, 11 December 1971, Page 17

DACCA NEARLY ENCIRCLED Refugees jam city as troops advance

(By

JULIAN KERR.

N .Z.P.A.-Reuter correspondent)

DACCA, December 10. Thousands of refugees jammed Dacca and s surrounding roads today as Indian troops pushed ever i closer for a final strike at the capital of war-ravaged East Pakistan. While their planes pounded Dacca Airport—reducing the chance that foreign nationals could be flown to safety—lndian units virtually encircled the city and all but cut it off from the outside world.

It was during one of these air strikes yesterday that high-flying Indian bombers scored direct hits on a crowded orphanage leaving at least 300 children dead in the ruins, according to police.

Four bombs dug huge craters in the main school building and dormitories of the Islam mission orphanage, about one mile south-east of the airport The young victims in this, the biggest civilian casualty toll reported so far in the week-old war, were mostly boys aged from eight to 15. In New Delhi, an Indian Government spokesman last night strongly denied that Indian planes had struck at civilian targets or hit an orphanage in Dacca. I visited the devastated orphanage and counted the bodies of 11 young boys lying in a thatched lean-to. Three were tom and mutilated by shrapnel. The others apparently had been killed by the blast. The buildings housed 400 orphans all told, but all of the 100 girls living there escaped unharmed.

Other bombs from the same aerial strike ploughed into a crowded Dacca housing area.

As Indian troops closed in on the ground, the Bengali population of Dacca awaited their coming with mixed feelings of excitement and fear. There was no immediate sign of an uprising by the

Mukti Bahini (guerrilla fighters) in support of the advanced troops as had been expected. It was feared that Dacca might be the battlefield for a

last stand by the Pakistani Army against the oncoming Indian forces and the Mukti Bahini soldiers fighting with them.

In their main drive, according to reports from the front, the Indian units have arrived in strength on the east bank of the Meghna River at Daudakhani, 22 miles from Dacca. Pakistani troops began regrouping on the west bank of the river and were digging in for what could be a lastditch stand at the last-but-one

major water barrier to the east of the capital. In the west, Indian troops reached the Ganges River, 30 miles from Dacca. All-India Radio said last night that Indian troops had taken the river port of Narayanganj, just five miles south of Dacca’s outskirts.