পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৩৫৩

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র : চতুর্দশ খণ্ড
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 One of the last targets was the Bengali language daily newspaper Ittefaq. Over 400 people had taken shelter in its offices when the fighting started.

 At 4 o'clock on the afternoon of the 26th four tanks appeared in the road outside. By 4.30 p.m. the building was an inferno. By Saturday morning only the charred remains of corpses were left.

 As quickly as they appeared the troops disappeared off the streets. On Saturday morning the radio announced the curfew would be lifted from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m.

 It then repeated the martial law regulations banning all political activity announcing Press censorship and ordering all government employees to report back for work and for all privately-owned weapons to be handed in.

Thousands flee

 Magically the city returned, to life and panic set in. By 10 army with pulls of black smoke still hanging over large areas of the old town and out in the distance towards the industrial areas, the streets were packed with fleeing people.

 By car. in rickshaws but mostly on foot carrying their possessions with them the people of Dacca were leaving. By midday they were on the move in their tens of thousands.

 "Please give me a lift, I'm an old man." “In the name of Allah help me." “Take my children with you,” came the pleas.

 Silent and unsmiling they passed and saw what the Army had done. It had been a through job, carefully planned and meticulously executed and they looked the other way and kept on walking.

 Down near one of the markets a shot was heard. Within seconds 2,000 people were running, but it had only been someone going to join the queues already forming to hand in their weapons.

 The Government offices remained almost empty. Most employees were leaving for their villages.

 Those who were not fleeing wandered aimlessly around the smoking debris of what were once their homes, lifting the blackened, twisted sheets of corrugated iron used in most shanty areas as roofing materials to save what they could from the ashes.

 Nearly every other car, if it was not taking people out into the countryside, was flying a Red Cross and convoying dead and wounded to the hospitals.

 And in the middle of it all occasional convoys of troops would appear, the soldiers peering unsmiling down the muzzles of their guns at the silent crowds.

 On the Friday night as they pulled back to their barracks, they shouted “Narai Takbir,” an old Persian war cry meaning “we have won the war."