This description of the fighting in Dacca was written in the city on Friday when our correspondent was prevented from leaving his hotel by the army, and telephone communications were cut off It was cabled to the “Guardian” from outside the country on Saturday morning.

The Bengali spring ended at 11-30 on Thursday night when convoys of army moved into Dacca with fire and sword. I saw the sword this morning, raised in the hand of army private as his truck drove behind a jeep fluttering an enormous Pakistani flag - a standard that has been rare in Bengal these past four weeks. The fire billowed from various sites around the town, most noticeably from a massive conflagration in the direction of the new university campus where rocket launchers opened up at 1:20 am and from which smoke is still rising nine hours later.

From my hotel on the main road to the military cantonment and airports just outside the city it is not possible to get a clear view of all that has happened. But since 11 last night we have not been permitted to leave by the army guards originally posted for the safety of west Pakistani politicians staying here. But this is what we saw at about 2:15 am, more than an hour after firing by automatic weapons appeared to become general, and an hour after the floor - shaking tremors of artillery were first felt. We overlook a crossroads on one corner of which the hotel stands and opposite which is a two-storey multi-market with a number of small shops. Down one side is a broad alley across which two cars had been drawn.

MACHINE-GUNS

The area was quiet and we were listening to firing half a mile or more away when two jeeps with machine-guns came round the corner and opened fire down the deserted road. They then sent fire arcing up the alley and into the cars. There was some shouting from the roof of the market and the guns opened up on its first-storey corner window. A group of soldiers tried unsuccessfully to fire a bazooka at the building and then two infantry sections milled about the cars, shifted them, and continued to fire occasional bursts down the road and into waste ground. They broke down the entrance into a scrap yard and started a fire before moving on to the offices of the “People” newspaper, which has been outspoken about Bengal independence and army brutality.

After calling on those inside to come out, so their lives could be spared (in Urdu though the language here is Bengali), soldiers broke in and swiftly set fire to the entire range of one-storey buildings. While this was going on about 15 youths emerged farther down the street and raised a slogan. When machine-gun fire was directed at them, they scattered. The soldiers retraced their steps down the alley with cheers of “Pakistan Zindabad” (long live Pakistan) and “Narai Tokbir” (victory for God).

At no time during the engagement did any fire appear to be directed at the soldiers who remained bunched most of the time and no injuries were sustained. The battle may have begun because they saw figures on a roof. It ended with two businesses burning brightly after deliberately being fired and a block riddled with bullets. If this is what happened on one street corner, one can only guess at what happened at places where barricades were being erected as early as 11 p.m. last night.

A correspondent attempting to return here after a dinner party found civilian roadblocks already erected by the cross-roads near the airport and bricks were thrown at his car. By 3 am there was a huge fire in that area. By 7 am tanks were out, followed by a crane, presumably to remove roadblocks. The heaviest firing during the night came from the direction of the university halls of residence. There must have been at least a dozen widely spaced howitzer reports with their preceding flash in the area of Mohsin Hall, the girls’ hostel, before at 2:30 the lights of Iqbal Hall, the central boys’ hostel, were blotted out by a huge tongue of flame.

Another fire was in the direction of the police headquarters from which a telephone call earlier had spoken of troops surrounding the building. It is impossible to estimate casualties accurately, but the figure must run into thousands. One fears what may be found at the university where students had trained militantly but like first-year school boy cadets with drill rifles and bamboo sticks.

The army believes it now has the province firmly under control. As one captain put it this morning, “Things will be better now. Now no one can come out and speak. At first we did not take this seriously but now we have taken it very seriously.” Another captain physically propelling us from the hotel forecourt towards the lobby, said: “If I kill my own people, I can also kill you. I can deal with you in a second.” He reminded me of the words of a military public relations official who said two weeks ago at a press briefing: “If we get the word, we can crush it like that,” and he snapped his fingers.

The army moved swiftly last night as soon as it became clear that the talks had failed. The action came after a meeting of generals in Dacca on Wednesday morning. Thus the army appears to have acted according to a well-coordinated plan but also to forestall any reaction from Sheikh Mujib to the breakdown of the talks. The situation was made critical by events at Chittagong and Saidpur in Rangpur district, north of Dacca. Barricades erected to prevent troops unloading cargo at Chittagong paralysed the whole town and cut it off from Dacca. Both in Chittagong and Saidpur, a number of people died in confrontations with the troops. The army’s three main targets appear to be political groups, armed civilians, and the press. According to the drum rattle of martial law orders beaten out this morning, all political activity is banned. The carrying of even such weapons as wooden sticks is prohibited, and rigorous censorship has been imposed.

With other foreign journalists, I was today put on a plane for Karachi. An army spokesman who passed on the martial law authorities’ request to leave said the troops had met little resistance. Most of the rocket launcher firings had been against barricades. But as I left, a huge pall of smoke hung in the air, a dense mass of it coming from the slum quarter of the old city. The spokesman said the army had prior knowledge of arms dumps at the university halls and had made for them which explained the big explosions there. “Had they,” I asked, snapping my fingers, “dealt with them like that?” He hesitated. “Yes”, he said, they had. The object, he said, had been “more or less to throw out an illegal de facto Government.”