24 Parganas District,
West Bengal, April 4
The long-standing fears of senior British diplomats that the upheaval in East Bengal might turn into a Vietnam-type conflict between pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet communists were substantiated today when thousands of Indian Maoists poured across the frontier with homemade bombs and guns.

At the same time the Soviet Union, which has a deep stake in the Indian sub-continent, lent its tacit support to the Bengalis and asked West Pakistan to stop "bloodshed and repression against the people of East Pakistan".

Reports that young Maoists from the communist hotbed of the 24 Parganas district of West Bengal had left for the frontier were confirmed by a senior police officer here. The Maoists have apparently crossed the border with the intention of linking up with the leader of the Maoists in East Bengal, Muhammad Toha.

The police officer said that about a third of the younger section of the population in the district who are Naxalite supporters bad disappeared.

Earlier today I saw both pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet communist guerrillas near the Benepole border post in East Bengal.

The pro-Soviet group is expected to support the counterparts, the National Awami Party (Wali Group) and the Awami League led by Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, while the Naxalites were seen touring border towns today denouncing Shaikh Mujibur Rahman as an American agent and a tool of Soviet revisionism.

In the meantime, a spokesman for the Liberation Front conceded at the border today that the Army still held the vital installations and the cantonment centres of most big towns, including Sylhet, Comilla, Chittagong, Khulna, Jessore, and Dacca.

But the Liberation Front claims that the Army is confined to these urban areas and that all main roads in rural areas and the smaller towns are under its own control.

Thousands of refugees, both Hindu and Muslim, have begun to cross the frontier. Refugee camps have already been set up in Assam and other parts of India.

Grim stories of death, page 5