পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (অষ্টম খণ্ড).pdf/৫৬৩

○○ど বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র : অষ্টম খন্ড THE NEW YORK TIMES November 17, 1971 EAST PAKISTAN TOWN AFTER RAID BY ARMY Fire and Destruction A task force of West Pakistani troops visited this town Shekharnagar, East Pakistan, of 8,000 on October 27 and destroyed it. Apparently informed-mistakenly, according to residents-that a guerrilla group was here, the army attacked without warning in motor launches. Towards the end of the 20-mile trip from Dacca the launches' engines alerted Shekharnagar’s population, most of which fled into nearby ponds, cannals and paddy fields. Shooting into houses and huts as they advanced, the troops set fire to nearly every building. Surviving residents pointed to the fresh graves where 19 villagers were buried. The concrete schoolhouse was stripped of its furniture and doors: which the troops burned to cook their evening meal, and a rice mill was destroyed. The village’s stock of freshly harvested rice was burned for the most part, and some 300 cows and sheep were slaughtered. A large quantity of wheat that villagers said had been sent under a United States aid program was reportedly loaded into the boats by the troops. A warehouse filled with bags of phosphate fertilizer was burned and most of the bags were destroyed. Several buildings belonging to the mosque were burned down and the Hindu temple-there are about 400 Hindus in the community-was burned and sacked, and its idols were smashed by gunfire. Even the local post office was sacked, and the villagers say the troops took away its stock of stamps and money. “Do you see this?” a villager said, “They even destroyed our fruit. Banana trees like these take a long time to grow, and the soldiers heaped up burning straw around them and destroyed them.” NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE (U.S.A) November 22, 1971 BENGAL : THE TIEM OF REVENGE The ghostly remains of recently burned villages scarred the semitropical countryside. Bloated corpses, entangled among white and purple water hyacinths, floated in the canals as reminders that the verdant landscape was a scene of tragedy. Along with Clare Hollingworth of London’s Daily Telegraph, I had traveled 45 miles outside the capital of Dacca-and into the heart of one of the “liberated” zones held by the Mukti Bahini guerrillas. The evidence-living as well as dead-of civil war was everywhere. Hundreds