Karachi, April 11
The Pakistan Government said tonight that its army had wiped out two companies of Indian troops yesterday in an engagement near Jessore, in East Pakistan.

The announcement was made by the Pakistan radio. Pakistan has accused India of sending infiltrators into East Pakistan to stir up trouble. but Delhi has denied sending any troops across the frontier.

The radio said the two Indian companies, from the Indian Border Security Force, had been routed and had suffered heavy casualties in the fighting, which it said was "in the Benapol area".

No further details about casualties were given, and the size of the Pakistan force involved was not disclosed. The radio said that two Indian soldiers who were reported captured yesterday had with them their rifles, a machine-gun, a radio set and a hand grenade.

The radio said the Indian prisoners, who have the rank of sepoy, the equivalent of private, had said the companies had been moved near the Indian-Pakistan border recently and then sent across on an infiltrating mission that took them 15 miles into Pakistan territory.

The prisoners were said to have divulged that their battalion, commanded by a lieutenant-colonel, had set up its headquarters at Bangaon, a town just west of the border opposite Benapol on April 3.

On the night of April 9 to 10 the units were said to have been deployed near Jhingergacha, a town 15 miles inside the border.

The radio gave this account of what followed: "Pakistan soldiers who were combing the area came into contact with these Indian infiltrators the same night. The infiltrators were armed with mortars, machine-guns, rifles and grenades. The Pakistan troops dealt with the intruders expeditiously and effectively."—New York Times News Service.


Peter Hazelhurst writes from Calcutta:
As the civil war in East Pakistan enters its third week, officials from international relief organizations who have arrived in Calcutta believe that the 75 million Bengalis might be threatened by widespread famine, which "would make the Biafran tragedy pale into insignificance".

Millions of Bengalis are believed to have been left homeless and destitute by the war. Hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled from the cities may, it is feared, starve to death in the countryside if they are not offered relief in the next few weeks.

But the religious and other international relief agencies also fear that any large rehabilitation scheme might he thwarted by the political differences between the two provinces and particularly by the Pakistan Army's rigid position that the situation is normal in East Bengal.

Mr. Stanley Mitton, the emergency officer of the World Council of Churches, has arrived in Calcutta from Geneva. He told me that his organization had ready funds available for relief work and it "can make an immediate appeal to the churches of the world if this is the right thing to do. But there are many difficulties. The sheer weight of numbers will make this a tremendous problem".

Mr. Mitton, who is on a fact-finding tour, says that he is under tremendous pressure to release certain portions of funds for immediate relief work. But he believes that the same political problems as frustrated relief work in Biafra might jeopardize any long-term rehabilitation scheme if the agencies put the wrong foot forward now.

The urgent problem is the plight of the minority communities stranded in both East and West Pakistan. There are an estimated five to eight million non-Bengali Muslim refugees from Bihar in East Bengal. Ethnically they are identified with the West Pakistanis and they have therefore become the first target for reprisals.

Thousands of Bihari Muslims have been killed.

There are also an estimated half million Bengalis in West Pakistan who are attempting to return to their home state.
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