Armoured attack
Leading political activists have been taken in. others have been murdered and the offices of two newspapers which supported (he Sheikh's movement have been destroyed.
But the first target as the tanks rolled into Dacca on the night of (he 25th was the students.
An estimated three battalions of troops were used in the attack on Dacca-one armored, one artillery and one infantry. They stared leaving the barracks shortly before 10 p.m.
By 11 firing had broken out and the people who had started hastily erecting makeshift barricades-overturned cars, tree stumps, furniture, concrete piping-became early casualties as the troops rolled into (own.
Sheikh Mujib was telephoned and warned that something was happening, but he defused to leave his house. “If I go into binding they will burn the whole of Dacca to find me,” he told an aide who escaped arrest.
200 students killed
The students were also warned but those who were still around later said (hat most (bought (hey would only be arrested.
Led by American-supplied M24 World War II tanks, one column of troops sped to Dacca University shortly after midnight. Troops took over the British Council library and used it as a fire-base to shell nearby dormitory areas.
Caught completely by surprise, some 200 students were killed in Iqbal Hall, headquarters of the militantly anti government students' union, as shells slammed into the building and their rooms were sprayed with machine-gun fire.
Two...burnt out rooms, others were scattered outside and more floated in a nearby lake. An art student lay sprawled across his easel. Seven teachers died in there quarters and a family of 12 were gunned down as they hid in an outhouse.
The military removed many of the bodies, but the 30 still there could never have accounted for all the blood in the corridors of Iqbal Hall.
At another hall the dead were buried by the soldiers in a hastily dug mass grave and then bulldozed over by tanks.
People living near the university were caught in the fire too and 200 yards of shanty houses running alongside a railway line were destroyed.
Army patrols also razed a nearby market area, running down between the stalls, killing their owners as they slept. Two days later, when it was possible to get out and see all this, some of the men were still living as though asleep, their blankets pulled up over their shoulders.
