Word: bengal
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Within hours after launching a tank-led offensive in Dacca and other East Pakistani cities on the night of March 25, the Pakistan army imposed a virtual blackout on the brutal civil war in Bangla Desh (Bengal State) by expelling foreign newsmen. TIME Correspondent Dan Coggin, who was among them, recently trekked back from India by Honda, truck, bus and bicycle to become the first American journalist to visit Dacca since the fighting started. His report...
...seemingly endless. A young man whose house was being searched begged the soldiers to do anything, but to leave his 17-year-old sister alone; they spared him so he could watch them murder her with a bayonet. Colonel Abudl Hai, a Bengali physician attached to the East Bengal Regiment, was allowed to make a last phone call to his family; an hour later his body was delivered to his home. An old man who decided that Friday prayers were more important than the curfew was shot to death as he walked into a mosque...
...heavily armed West Pakistani troopers. But soldiers have also suffered severe casualties at the hands of irate peasants. The army controlled the capital of Dacca, the vital ports of Chittagong and Khulna, and several other towns. But a ragtag resistance movement called the Bangla Desh Mukti Fauj (Bengal State Liberation Forces) was reportedly already in control of at least one-third of East Pakistan, including many cities and towns. West Pakistani authorities have almost completely succeeded in obscuring the actual details of the fighting from the outside world by expelling all foreign newsmen from East Pakistan. But last week TIME...
...March 31, a force of some 5,000 peasants and policemen launched a campaign to liberate Kushtia. Thousands of townspeople thronged the streets shouting "Joi Bangla [Victory to Bengal]!" The soldiers apparently panicked at the thought of being engulfed by so many thousands of furious Bengalis. "We were very surprised," lamented Naik Subhedar (Senior Sergeant) Mohammed Ayub later, following his capture. "We thought the Bengali forces were about the size of one company like ourselves. We didn't know everybody was against...
...Bandaranaike referred to the guerrillas last week as "Che Guevarists," tactfully refraining from any reference to the Chinese, on whom she depends for aid. In reality, the Liberation Front is a Maoist terrorist organization similar to the Naxalite movement of India's West Bengal state. Its 2,000 fighting members, many of whom belong to Ceylon's educated rural elite, grew to 70,000 or more in last week's fighting and outnumbered the armed forces by at least 3 to 1. The Prime Minister at one point went on radio "as a woman...