Word: kushtia
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Dates: during 1971-1971
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...suburb of Khulna, naked children and haggard women scavenge the rubble where their homes and shops once stood. Stretches of Chittagong's Hizari Lane and Maulana Sowkat Ali Road have been wiped out. The central bazaar in Jessore is reduced to twisted masses of corrugated tin and shattered walls. Kushtia, a city of 40,000, now looks, as a World Bank team reported, "like the morning after a nuclear attack." In Dacca, where soldiers set sections of the Old City ablaze with flamethrowers and then machine-gunned thousands as they tried to escape the cordon of fire, nearly 25 blocks...
...withheld pending a "political accommodation." World Bank President Robert McNamara classified the report on the grounds that it might worsen an already difficult diplomatic situation. The report spoke bluntly of widespread fear of the Pakistani army and devastation on a scale reminiscent of World War II. It described Kushtia, which was 90% destroyed, as "the My Lai of the West Pakistani army." A middle-level World Bank official leaked the study, and last week McNamara sent Yahya an apology; in his letter he reportedly said that he found the report "biased and provocative." Yet one Bank official insisted that though...
...Choice. In Mujib's absence, the resistance movement is sorely lacking leadership, as well as arms, ammunition and communications gear. In late March, the mukti fauj (liberation forces) overwhelmed several company-size elements, as at Kushtia and Pabna, but bolt-action rifles cannot stop Sabre jets, artillery and army troops operating in battalion strength...
Little Headway. Next day the Pakistan army dispatched another infantry company from Jessore to stage a counterattack on Kushtia. At Bishakali village, halfway to Kushtia, the new company fell into a booby trap set by Bangla Desh forces. Two Jeeps in the nine-vehicle army convoy plunged into a deep pit covered with bamboo and vines. Seventy-three soldiers were killed on the spot, and dozens of others were chased down and slain...
...last week, the green, red and gold flags of Bangla Desh fluttered from rooftops, trucks and even rickshas in Kushtia. Bengali administrators were running the region under the local party leader, Dr. Ashabul Haq, 50, a forceful physician who packs a Welby & Scott revolver and a Spanish Guernica automatic. At week's end, two army battalions established an outpost a few miles from Kushtia. They were reported, however, to be making little headway against furious resistance. Even if the soldiers managed to reach Kushtia, the townspeople were more than ready to fight again...