Sikhs Holding Golden Temple Give Up; Death Toll in 10-Day Siege Put at 46

Sikh radicals surrendered Wednesday after a 10-day siege and emerged from their revered Golden Temple here.

Forty-five men and a woman emerged, hands in the air or clasped on their heads. About 2,800 police, commandos and paramilitary troops surrounded the sacred compound, which has walls 20 feet high and covers the equivalent of five city blocks.

“No terrorist is inside the complex,” said K.P.S. Gill, police chief of Punjab state. “All of them have come out.”

Gill said that one radical tried to flee and was shot dead and that three committed suicide by swallowing cyanide capsules. Another had committed suicide by the same method Sunday.

Officials say 42 people, most of them militant Sikhs, were killed during the siege, bringing the death toll to 46 with the suicides. Five bodies were found inside the complex.

The Golden Temple, Sikhism’s holiest site, has been the center and symbol of Sikh militancy since Sikh separatists began their war in 1982. Wednesday’s surrender is not likely to end their struggle for a Sikh nation in this rich northern agricultural state.

Sikh extremists killed 1,032 people last year, and so far this year at least 1,063 have died, including at least 40 on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The victims included 31 itinerant Hindu laborers slain in their tents near a canal they were building at Majjat, a village 120 miles southeast of Amritsar.

“This is a day of great relief,” Punjab Gov. Sidharth Shankar Ray said Wednesday night, but he added that “it is neither victory nor defeat.”