পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড).pdf/৩৩৪

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড
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 Official spokesmen contended that the army went into action to stop a rebellion planned for 3 o'clock the next morning. They insisted that the army killed no one but those who fired at the soldiers.

 But other officers said the rebellion plot was only an assumption.

 Eye-witnesses said at least hundreds of the victims were women and thousands were unarmed civilians gunned down indiscriminately.

 I took firm action to prevent heavy casualties later,” said the martial law governor, Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan.

 Dacca was brought under army control quickly, but word of the army action flashed through the province of 58,000 square miles and 75 million inhabitants, one of the world's most densely populated areas.

 Thousands of Bengalis in the army, police, militia and border forces revolted. Under the banner of Bangladesh, the independent Bengali state, the deserters and armed volunteers fought back, seizing wide areas of the provinces before the 11,000 West Pakistani regulars could occupy them.

 Bengali civilians and “liberation troops” began a mass slaughter of MohajirsIndian migrants from the 1947 partition-and West Pakistanis.

 They raced through market places and settlements, stabbing, shooting and burning, sometimes stopping to rape and loot.

 The army shelled towns and fired at anything that moved. The army action was far more brutal than anything seen in the Nigerian civil war.

 Europeans likened the damage to that of the hardest hit the eaters of World War II.