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Amritsar (AP). - Several of the more than 1,000 Sikh militants killed in Amritsar last week were shot at point-blank range by troops who first tied their hands behind their backs, doctor and a police official said yesterday (Brahma Chellaney of the Associated Press, the only foreign correspondent in Amritsar during the storming of the temple, writes).

The doctor, a Sikh who works in a government hospital in nearby Jullundur said: "Two of the Sikhs whose post-mortem examination I conducted had their hands tied at the back. 

"Some of my other colleagues conducting post-mortems also came across young Sikhs who had been shot this way." he said.

The doctor who requested anonymity, said many women and children were among the victims, and described killing the at the temple as a "virtual massacre".

An Amritsar deputy police superintendent who helped to remove the bodies of the Sikh extremist leader, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and 200 other militants from the Golden Temple, also reported that at least 13 Sikhs were tied and shot by submachine-gun-toting soldiers. The superintendent also requested anonymity.

The sources said the militants' turbans had been re moved and  their hands tied with the gunman cloth. Each of them had been killed with single shot fired at their forehead.

The doctor said that although he was an eye specialist and had never previously conducted a formal post-mortem examination, he as well as many other doctors rounded and were taken to Amritsar under army escort last week.

Last week the Government ordered troops to storm the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion, in an effort to end a Sikh-led campaign for greater autonomy that had resulted in hundreds of deaths. The death toll is expected to rise to about 1,300.

"It has been a nightmare," the 45-vear-old doctor said. "Even when I sleep at night I dream of all those decomposed bodies lying in the 'dead house'. Faces were swollen and in some cases tongues had come out of mouths." He said that because of the lack of space the bodies were piled on top of each other.

The "dead house” is building near the main hospital that was used as a morgue.

A local journalist said he saw a dozen Sikh youths arrested inside the Golden Temple being made to pull their trousers above their knees, kneel and march on the hot road. "The soldiers repeatedly kicked and punched them." he said.