Ershad Ali clutched a sliver of hope as he searched for a familiar face among the dead at Chuknagar Bazar.

It was May 20. The year -- 1971.

Ershad was searching for his father, Chikon Ali. Each bloated face he flipped over was a shard of shattered hope, a silent scream.

Suddenly, a whimper snagged his attention. There laid the body of a woman, her lifeless eyes staring blankly at the sky. Beside her was a little girl, not more than two.

With a heartbreaking innocence, she suckled on her dead mother's breast.

Ershad's heart clenched. He scooped up the child. Her warmth provided him with some comfort despite the chilling scenes around them. He named her Sundori, she was his ray of sunshine in a very gloomy time. With the help of his friend Mander Das, Ershad raised Sundori as his own.

He, however, could never find his father.

As Chuknagar, now a small town, was located near a navigable river channel and was too remote to be occupied by the Pakistan army, refugees considered it an ideal route for their journey to the Indian border.

Thousands of refugees started to gather at Chuknagar at the beginning of May 1971. On the 18th and 19th of May, thousands from Bagerhat, Rampal, Morelganj, Sharankhola, Mongla, Dakope, Batiaghata, Chalna and even many people from as far as Faridpur and Barishal started to come to Chuknagar.

They used to rest at Chuknagar after crossing the Bhadra before continuing their journey to the Indian border.

At that time, Golam Hossain, a Muslim League leader, was the chairman of the Atolia union council. When Golam (now deceased) learnt about the massive gathering of refugees at Chuknagar, he informed the Pakistan army stationed in Satkhira district.

They sent a platoon of soldiers on May 20 to conduct a raid at Chuknagar.

The horror started around 11:00am. A truck and a jeep, full of Pakistani soldiers, reached the Jhautala area of Malotia intersection in Chuknagar under Khulna's Dumuria upazila.

A farmer was working in his jute field nearby. Before he could understand anything, the Pakistan army fired at him, killing him on the spot. As the occupation troops approached the village, they found a demolished culvert, which connects two parts of the village.

From that point, the platoon got divided into three raiding parties -- one of which entered Chuknagar Bazar, another went towards Malopara-Raypara area along the Bhadra river, and the remaining group strode towards Patkhola Beel.

A huge number of refugees took shelter at that time at Patkhola Beel. As one of the marauding groups found the refugees gathered there, they started firing indiscriminately, said Sk Quamaruzzaman Tuku, commander of Mujib Bahini in greater Khulna region.

Another group coming from Malopara-Raypara area soon joined the army.

People started running frantically for life, but most of them were gunned down. The entire marsh turned into a sea of bodies, he added.

Meanwhile, many people drowned as they jumped into the Bhadra river in a largely futile attempt to flee the carnage.

On that day, more than 10,000 people, mostly belonging to the Hindu community, were slain by the Pakistan army at Chuknagar in only six hours, according to "Bangladesher Shadhinota Juddho: Dalilpatro".

The Pakistan army started the massacre at 11:00am and stopped at 5:00pm on May 20 only due to the fact that they ran out of ammunition. Most of the bodies were dumped into the Bhadra.

The survivors were left grappling with a trauma that would scar them for life. Abul Kalam Mohiuddin, is one of them.

"There were so many bodies all around the field that it was impossible to bury them or burn them in accordance with the ritual," he said.

"So, the bazar committee decided to dispose of the bodies into the river as the nearby Bhadra river was quite torrential. People of Chuknagar and the nearby villages became so frightened that they never ventured near these rivers for the rest of the war," he said.

Shankar Kumar Mallick, Trustee of the 1971: Genocide-Torture Archive and Museum in Khulna, said, "While 1,500 people died in the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, over 10,000 were killed in the Chuknagar genocide. However, the day is still underrepresented in history."

In 2005, the government purchased 78 decimals of land, and in 2006, a 32-decimal portion of it was used to build the Chuknagar Shaheed Smritishoudho memorial to honour the victims.