পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/১০১

69 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড At 4.30 a.m. on March 31, a force of some 5,000 peasants and policemen launched a campaign to liberate Kushtia. Thousands of townspeople thronged the streets shouting "Joi Bangla" (Victory to Bengal)! The soldiers apparently panicked at the thought of being engulfed by so many thousands of furious Bengalis. "We were very surprised," lamented Naik Subedar (Senior Sergeant) Mohammad Ayub later, following his capture. "We thought the Bengali forces were about the size of one company like ourselves. We didn't know everybody was against us." Instant Death The Bengali fighters made no suicidal, human-wave assaults at Kushtia as they have done in some places. But the steady drumfire of hundreds of rifles had a relentless effect on the soldiers of Delta Company. By noon, the government building and district headquarters all fell. Shortly before dawn the next day, about 75 soldiers made a dash for their jeeps and trucks and roared away in a blaze of gunfire. Two jeeps were halted almost immediately by surging mobs. The East Pakistanis pulled out the dozen soldiers and butchered them on the spot. The other vehicles were blocked outside town by fallen tree barricades and 4-ft, ditches dug across the black ton road. The soldiers managed to shoot down about 50 Bengalis before they were overpowered and hacked to death by peasants. A few soldiers escaped but were later captured and killed. Before dawn the next day, the last 13 soldiers in Kushtia stole out of the radio building and covered 14 miles on foot before two Bengali militiamen took them prisoner and brought them back to the Kushtia district jail. The 13 were the only known survivors of Delta Company's 147 men. Among the West Pakistani dead was Nassim Waquer, a 29 years old Punjabi who last January had been appointed Assistant Deputy Commissioner at Kushtia. When an angry mob found his body, they dragged it through the streets of the town for half a mile. Little Headway Next day the Pakistan army dispatched another infantry company from Jessore to stage a counter attack on Kushtia. At Bishakali village, halfway to Kushtia, the new company fell into it booby trap set by Bangladesh forces. Two jeeps in the ninevehicle army convoy plunged into a deep pit covered with bamboo and vines. Seventy-three soldiers were killed on the spot, and dozens of others were chased down and slain. All last week, the green, red and golden flags of Bangladesh fluttered from rooftops, trucks and even rickshaws in Kushtia. Bengali administrators were running the region under the local party leader, Dr. Ashabul Haq, 50, a Spanish physician who packs a Webly & Scott revolver and a Spanish Guernica automatic. At week's end, two army battalions established an outpost a few miles from Kushtia. They were reported, however, to be making little headway against furious resistance. Even if the soldiers managed to reach Kushtia, the townspeople were more than ready to fight again.