Jessore, E. Pakistan, April 1

Bengali troops and civilians armed with primitive spears and elephant guns are today starting a wholesale killing of Punjabis in this city of 50,000 people in southern " Bangla Desh”.

Today, I watched crowds of irregular militiamen taking 11 Punjabi prisoners whom they called "spies" to the city's market place where they proceeded to hack them to death with bamboo stakes and spears.

The killings were the result of equally brutal shootings by West Pakistan soldiers who are almost all Punjabi tribesmen from the western province.

After about 90 people had been killed in Jessore since the Pakistan troubles began last Thursday, the Punjabi troops retired to the cantonment military camp area leaving the town in the control of "special police" of the East Pakistan Rifles and irregular sympathizers of Shaikh Mujibur Rahman who have poured in from the countryside shouting " Jai Bangla ", the slogan of the Shaikh's followers.

While in control of the town the Shaikh's supporters discovered this morning that Punjabi soldiers on patrol last night had burnt eight houses and killed at least seven Jessore civilians. They believed that local Punjabi "informers" had pointed out the houses of Shaikh Mujibur's men.

Therefore, in revenge, they had taken as prisoners local Punjabi residents from the western wing who had settled in the town many years ago.

At midday today 11 of these Punjabis were marched to the market place. A team from the B.B.C. programme Panorama and myself found the half-alive and bloody bodies of men whom we recognized as the Punjabi prisoners we had seen an hour before.

Before we were forced to leave by threatening supporters of Shaikh Mujib we saw another 40 Punjabi "spies" being taken towards the killing ground with their hands on their heads, irregulars pushing them in the back with primitive guns.

The new reprisal killings must inevitably lead to greater hysteria on the part of the local Bengalis in Jessore and its neighbourhood who so far have remained in control and have not been too violent. It must also lead to the possibility that the government in Karachi will be forced to send in even more troops to protect their fellow countrymen.

There is a terrible prospect of an increasing series of killings and counter killings such has not been seen in the Indian subcontinent since the Hindu-Muslim riots during partition.

The situation in Jessore, according to some observers in the town, is typical of that elsewhere in East Pakistan: Shaikh Mujib's men in loose control, but West Pakistan troops poised for attack from guarded cantonments.