organizing guerilla warfare in villages in the countryside.
But if the Army continued to hold the biggest cities and ports, industry would falter, the economy would come to a standstill and the freedom fighters would be denied petrol and other vital commodities.
With the food distribution system in chaos, there is a trickle of refugees crossing the border into India.
At the Benapole border post, 22 miles west of the besieged city of Jessore, the Bengalis turn a blind eye as journalists move across the border towards Jessore.
As we cross the border, Indian troops at about battalion strength, have moved up to the frontier and are pitching camp. A short walk and we are in East Bengal.
Your correspondent is eventually offered a lift by East Bengal communist freedom fighters who are heading for Jessore. We have heard that heavy shelling has broken out again. T wo armed guards in makeshift uniform clamber aboard the station wagon, and with tyres screeching we head for Jessore. As we pass through the villages, the people and local police wave and greet the freedom fighters with shouts of “Hail, Bengal".
The car stops at the village of Jhikargacha, seven mile west of Jessore. The National Awami Party men have heard that the Pakistan Army might move out of the cantonment at any foment and move up the road to this village to raid the food storage depot.
The villagers, who have no arms, look terrified. Scores of bicycle rickshaws with bags of rice are moving westward to hide the food in the countryside.
New transport is offered and a Jeep takes me on to Jessore.
The Army has been driven out and is at present entrenched in the military cantonment to our left. As we move into the back of the city. I am shown a communal grave of victims of the Army shooting last week. No one can estimate the death toll.
Mr. Kasi Abdul Shahid. organizer of the National Awamy Party, says that he saw 100 people shot when the Army moved in to the town last week. Many political leaders in Jessore were arrested and taken back of the military cantonment.
Mr. Shahid estimates that 1,500 people have been killed since the civil war erupted two weeks ago.
An Awami League worker points towards a collapsed house; “about 500 to 600 houses have been burnt and another 100 houses have been destroyed,” he says.
In the Kushtia district to the north, I am shown the decomposing bodies of Punjabi soldiers who were hacked to death by villagers last week when the three companies stationed in the region were overwhelmed by a mob of 40,000 people.
