Indian Commandos Push Into Golden Temple to Expel Sikhs : Elite Force Seizes Towers Adjoining Inner Sanctum

Elite Indian commandos pushed into the Golden Temple complex today in an effort to dislodge Sikh extremists, capturing two towers and a dining hall that adjoin the inner sanctum of Sikhism’s holiest site, police said.

It was the first major invasion of the complex since a police siege of the shrine began May 9.

Sikh gunmen had used the minarets as vantage points to fire at police and paramilitary troops.

Elsewhere in Punjab, attacks by Sikh extremists took 10 lives in the previous 24 hours, the United News of India reported. That followed 44 killings late Sunday and Monday, the highest total in a similar time period since militants began a terrorist campaign for a separate Sikh nation in 1982.

Towers Taken

K. P. S. Gill, chief of the Punjab state police, said that the towers overlooking the gold-domed temple were taken this evening but that “operations still are continuing in the basement connecting the towers.”

He said about 90 men of the “Black Cat” commandos penetrated the two-level basement, firing gas bombs and incendiary shells to force out the extremists.

Dense clouds of smoke billowed from holes at the tops of the towers. About six militants are believed still in the basement, which the militants had made into a major fortification.

The body of a Sikh militant was recovered from the first floor of one of the towers, Gill said, and police expect to find more. Authorities have reported 36 people slain in the siege, most of them Sikh militants.

Gill said police recovered nine guns, including four Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles and a machine gun and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition in the parts of the complex they were able to enter.

Food, Ammo Stored

Police said about 60 radicals are still believed to be in various parts of the complex. Some are believed to be inside the clock tower over the main northern entrance, and about 10 are thought to be in the Akal Takht, seat of Sikhism’s spiritual and temporal power. The Akal Takht building faces the gold-domed inner sanctum on the western side.

According to police, the militants have large stocks of food and ammunition in the compound. An officer of the paramilitary National Security Guard said police have been firing incendiary shells at buildings believed to hold food.

Any attempt to storm the inner sanctum would be viewed by devout Sikhs as the gravest desecration.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by Sikh bodyguards Oct. 31, 1984, four months after she ordered the army into the Golden Temple to uproot armed Sikh militants. More than 1,200 people, mostly Sikhs, were killed in that assault.