Panama Bands Stage Bloody Attack : Combat: Troops believed directed by Noriega hit downtown. Continued resistance mocks U.S. claims that situation is under control.

PANAMA CITY —  Armed bands said by U.S. military officials to be directed by ousted dictator Manuel A. Noriega staged a bloody attack Friday in downtown Panama City near the American military headquarters and frustrated efforts by U.S. troops to pacify this city.

Firing mortars, machine guns and automatic rifles, the attackers hit Panama’s national police headquarters, less than a mile from the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command, about 11:30 a.m., catching American forces by surprise and causing confusion for at least 10 minutes and leaving several people wounded.

The assault came shortly after a U.S. Army briefing officer told reporters that “gunfire has diminished and the situation is much quieter in the last several hours.”

Sporadic shooting continued while U.S. Special Forces and helicopter gunships searched out the attackers.

Three days after nearly 10,000 U.S. troops invaded Panama and drove Noriega into hiding, the continued bloody resistance by his forces mocked claims by American officials, from President Bush downward, that the situation is well in hand and U.S. troops are “mopping up.”

On the contrary, reporters in the city as well as residents and other eyewitnesses saw such continuous violence and looting, that the city appeared in virtual anarchy.

Support for that assessment came Friday night from Air Force Col. Ronald Sconyers, chief Southern Command spokesman.

“It’s a war out there,” he said, as he tried to persuade reporters to return to the United States.

One U.S. soldier was killed in action Friday, military officials said. After revising a previous count, they said the total number of U.S. servicemen killed since the operation began about 1 a.m. Wednesday stood at 21. In addition, two civilian dependents have been killed, officials said. They added that more than 240 U.S. servicemen have been wounded and four are missing.

On the Panamanian side, U.S. officials said that 127 troops have been killed in action and 69 wounded. There has been no official count of Panamanian civilians killed or wounded during the fighting.

Officials at Santo Tomas Hospital in Panama City reported that 100 bodies are stored there, and Gorgas Hospital said it has 60 more.

For yet another day, Noriega eluded intense American efforts to apprehend him, frustrating one of President Bush’s major goals in invading this country.

Gen. Maxwell Thurman, head of the Southern Command, said that Noriega, 54, was commanding his supporters in hit and run tactics that the U.S. officer described as “terrorism. . . . It is my feeling that this is centrally controlled” by Noriega and “that some people will rally to him” until he is captured.

The tactics of the Noriega loyalists frustrated nearly all of the expressed goals of U.S. planners for the operation. In spite of the destruction of Panama’s military headquarters and the capture by American troops of nearly every major Panama military base, more than 13,000 of the estimated 15,000 members of Noriega’s Panama Defense Forces remained at large.

American troop commanders said that it could take up to 10 days to crush the resistance and restore order.

The Pentagon on Friday dispatched 2,000 fresh troops from the 7th Infantry Division at Ft. Ord, Calif., to supplement the 22,500 U.S. troops already in Panama, officials in Washington said.

In addition to the attack on police headquarters near the Southern Command’s headquarters at Quarry Heights, there were sporadic attacks by the fugitive dictator’s supporters at the Legislative Assembly building and a police station near the Panama Canal Commission headquarters in the Balboa section of the city. A mortar also struck and set fire to a U.S. Navy warehouse at water’s edge, across the Panama Canal from Rodman Naval Station.

While the capital of Panama remained in a state of near-anarchy, U.S. officials in Washington said that order was gradually being restored.

“We will continue to do what is necessary to help the people of Panama achieve the democratic society that they voted for and that they so rightfully deserve,” President Bush declared during a speech at the National Institutes of Health.

“That’s what our American soldiers are achieving--freedom and human liberty for those who have endured brutal tyranny and brutal oppression,” he said.

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said U.S. troops had secured the Legislative Assembly building, where Guillermo Endara, who was installed as president on a U.S. military base minutes before the invasion began, established his offices.

But as Ricardo Arias Calderon, one of Endara’s vice presidents, was leaving the Assembly building Friday, members of one of Noriega’s paramilitary Dignity Battalions shot at his car. Arias was uninjured, but two of his aides were wounded, an Arias aide said.

Fitzwater said that U.S. forces also had secured the Foreign Ministry, the Health Ministry, the Finance Ministry and the Central Bank.

“We’re particularly concerned about the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry because they now can begin dealing with the money that will be needed for the economic development of the country,” Fitzwater said.

But elsewhere in Panama City, U.S. officials said they had much work ahead of them.

“We have not cleared this area out,” said Col. Mike Snell, escorting reporters on a tour of a neighborhood that housed the bombed-out headquarters of the Panama Defense Forces.

“There are still people with weapons around. To secure this area totally is going to take months of work and a combination of military and other forces,” he said. “Everybody downtown has a gun.”

Gen. Thurman of the Southern Command blamed Noriega’s Dignity Battalions--paramilitary militiamen often described by American officials as “thugs”--for much of the continuing violence.

“A number of (members of) Dignity Battalions are loose in the city,” he told a news conference at his headquarters, “and we are having to work hard to get those particular units under control.”

At a Pentagon news briefing in Washington, Army Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Kelly, director for operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of the Dignity Battalions: “They’re looting, sniping. They are lawless. There are some others who are lawless. However, we have been able to make some progress. We have the 82nd Airborne in the city moving from northeast to southwest; the 193rd Brigade with elements of the 6th MP Company moving from southwest to northeast. At some point they’ll link up.”

As U.S. troops made their way through the city, they were frequently greeted with the “V” for victory sign.

“There were a lot of people cheering us on and clapping. They are on our side,” said Lance Cpl. Tracy Scott Jones, 24, a Marine from Texas.

Large areas of the city were in chaos. Residents in many sections said that armed civilians were roaming the streets at will, firing indiscriminately into houses, stealing cars and robbing people.

“In four days we haven’t seen one American soldier,” said a woman who called into an English-language radio station. “We are being terrorized, but no one will help us.”

Looting and wide-spread property destruction continued as the city went without police protection. All of Panama’s police are part of the now disorganized and scattered Panama Defense Forces, the nation’s sole military and security organization.

The central Panama City area was so insecure that Gen. Thurman was unable to leave his Quarry Heights headquarters for a news conference scheduled at Howard Air Base across the Panama Canal, normally a 20-minute drive.

Air Force officials and enlisted men said planes landing at Howard, the area’s major air facility, were regularly fired on as they landed. A chartered jet carrying about 175 reporters from Miami on Friday morning was hit by small arms fire. No one was hurt.

However, at least one giant C-141 cargo plane was damaged badly on its approach and another came under heavy fire from a densely-wooded area overlooking the runway when it skidded into the mud.

The numbers and condition of Americans who may be held hostage by Noriega loyalists remained unclear. CBS News producer Jon Meyersohn was still missing Friday after having been abducted Wednesday from the Marriott Hotel.

In soccer stadiums, churches and schools, thousands of refugees took cover from the fighting. A Red Cross worker said that the relief agency has water but that it is running short of food. Gen. Kelly in Washington said that U.S. planes with food, medicine and other necessary supplies will be dispatched to Panama by today.

In the ravaged city, supermarkets and other stores were empty, victims of a binge of looting that cleared out furniture stores, car lots and nearly all other retail establishments, and garbage rotted on the streets.

Thurman said that $1-million reward that Bush has offered for information leading to the capture of Noriega “is producing a substantial number of bits of information on his whereabouts.”

But U.S. officials, who initially expressed optimism about finding the Panamanian leader, displayed no such views Friday, declaring that they had no idea when he might be captured.

Despite Noriega’s ability to elude his pursuers, support for the U.S. operation showed no signs of abating at home.

As poll after poll showed overwhelming public support, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), ranking Republican on the panel, emerged from a three-hour briefing with Defense Department officials expressing even greater support for the invasion than they had announced earlier.

“This morning’s hearing added another dimension,” Nunn said. “Gen. Noriega has been acting irrationally. He was given an opportunity to leave the country. President Bush had very good reason to believe things were going to get worse.”

Nunn and Warner said that there were diplomatic efforts by the United States and other countries to persuade Noriega to leave Panama with assurances that he would not be prosecuted on U.S. drug charges if he moved to a country that did not have an extradition treaty with the United States. However, Noriega rejected those attempts, which immediately preceded the invasion, the senators said.

“His psychology and neurotic condition didn’t allow him to take heed,” Warner said. “He pursued the resistant course that he had been following.”

Warner said evidence also showed that Noriega was arming as many as 250 Dignity Battalion members to attack Americans in their living quarters.

President Bush flew to Camp David at mid-day after his morning speech to begin an 11-day holiday there and in Texas, where he plans to visit service personnel wounded in Panama who are being treated in military hospitals in San Antonio.

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang, in Washington, contributed to this story.

MILITARY ACTION IN PANAMA 1. David--PDF barracks hoists white flag of surrender.

2. Chiriqui--Panama Defense Forces (PDF) abandon some posts on frontier with Costa Rica after hearing reports U.S. forces would scour province in search for Noriega.

3. Colon--Fighting between U.S. forces, Noriega loyalists.

4. San Miguelito--Stubborn pocket of resistance by Noriega loyalists in San Miguelito, a working-class suburb of 200,000. There were rumors Noriega might be hiding out in Tinajitas garrison in San Miguelito district.

5. Carti, El Llano--U.S. helicopters rescue 11-member Smithsonian Institution research team from a jungle between Carti and El Llano.

1. Panama Canal Commission--Neighborhood attacked by Noriega loyalists.

2. U.S. Southern Command--Noriega loyalists attack U.S. Southern Command headquarters fromrailway tracks below heights; snipers reported in adjacent hills.

3. PDF headquarters--House-to-house search of neighborhood by U.S. forces looking for Noriega.

4. Ft. Amador--Raiders find drugs and witchcraft paraphernalia in Noriega’s inner sanctum in Ft. Amador.

5. Legislative Assembly--Vice President Ricardo Arias Calderon is target of an assassination attempt after leaving Assembly building; Arias unhurt but 2 aides are injured.

6. Presidential Palace--Scattered gunfire continues in neighborhood of Presidential Palace.

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