পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৪৭০

438 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ ১৭৭। ঢাকা ডায়েরী অবজারভার ১২ ডিসেম্বর, ১৯৭১ THE OBSERVER, DECEMBER 12. 1971 DACCA DAHRY Gavin Young, who has reported many wars for 'The Observer,' has been in Dacca since the Indo-Pakistan war erupted. During the week the following messages have reached us from him; he was able to transmit only single short cables at any one time. Tuesday: I have had series of the closest views of the undersides of Indian MiG jets that I could ever wish for. I had gone with other journalists to Dacca Airport to view a shot down Indian plane. And while there we were trapped by a new attack. I was recumbent under an inadequate palm tree, feeling like the lady surprised in her bath with only a sponge to wear. They came back and back, wheeling in from different directions, very low-say. 20 to 30 feet directly overhead-banking away after releasing their rockets. The noise was shattering, but the Pakistani anti-aircraft guns-a wide variety-outshattered them. Bits of shrapnel fell around. A United Nations plane went up in smoke; rockets ploughed through a hangar. It was an exhilarating show. If the Indians had bombs under their wings, or napalm, few journalists would be left alive. Wednesday. Today I drove to Narayanganj, the big river port 12 miles from Dacca. I had heard of devastation there, but saw little. Barbed wire and guns were everywhere. Bombing at night, Indian pilots had hit the sleeping heart of a pauper residential area half a mile from a power station. Four or five hundred civilians were killed and 150 were in hospital; the dead were buried in the mud as they slept. Other things, remind us that all is not black and white-some hamlets demolished by fire on the roadside, not by bombs but by the Pakistan Army. God knows what editors in London are making of the news they get about Dacca. Correspondents of daily newspapers and agencies here are still receiving much delayed cables from London demanding to know why they have received no daily file on events and details of life, smells and sounds. Don't they know we can't get outf And that cables have massive delays? One newsman was asked why he could not fly out by Pakistan International Airlines if others were suspended. Does his editors really think that any airline at all has been coming here since last Friday? Thursday: The worst of it till now is the horror of the Islamic orphanage, hit by Indian bombs at 4 o'clock this morning. Three hundred boys and girls were sleeping there. I saw the place soon after dawn. Bombs had ploughed everyone into a vast and hideous mud-cake, most of them dead. Some under the head were breathing, no doubt, but how far down, how badly injured, no one could tell.