Anarchy Rampant in Chaotic Panama City : Lawlessness: Many in the city welcomed U.S. troops. But now they’re paying a fearful price.

PANAMA CITY —  Crying and pulling at her hair, a woman in high heels picked her way through mobs of looters on the crowded Via Espana. “They put a gun to my head and stole my car!” she shrieked.

Around the corner at a neighborhood grocery store, a businessman, frantic and frightened, drew a revolver from his pocket. “I’ve never used one of these in my life,” he muttered, “but we are protecting our building.”

On Avenida Central, Moises Levi stood in front of his electronics store, stripped of its merchandise, and watched angrily as men and women sacked his brother’s shop next door. All of this, he declared, was caused by an American invasion gone awry.

“They (the Americans) do the right thing, but not the right way,” he said. “You don’t destroy the gangsters and leave the country to be destroyed.”

It was a complaint heard frequently Friday in Panama City, where chaos boiled into anarchy three days after thousands of U.S. troops deposed Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega and then tried in vain to keep order. Panamanians in civilian dress battled with rifles and pistols on sidewalks and in parking lots.

The wounded lay dying on the blacktop.

Ambulances screamed through the streets. As night fell, the heavy thud of guns mounted on armored personnel carriers could be heard minutes before a 6 p.m. curfew. When it finally grew dark, the shooting died. Americans were told to leave the streets. Some Panamanians stood on their roofs and balconies and went on watching.

During what seemed to him like a very long day, Dr. Jose Leonardo Diaz, spokesman for Santo Tomas Hospital, counted the wounded. He said he had treated more than 1,000 “since the beginning of this absurd invasion.” The doctor said his morgue held more than 100 dead--and it was full.

Most of the dead, he said, were civilians.

As American A-37 fighter jets thundered overhead and black smoke billowed in the distance, looters backed up their pickup trucks to shattered storefronts and piled them high with furniture, tires and appliances. Men and women dashed through the streets pushing dollies and shopping carts filled to the brim with stolen goods.

Downtown streets were obstacle courses filled with broken glass and concertina wire, garbage fires and stripped and burned cars. One woman in shorts dodged around it all, carrying a golf bag. Another wore a half-cocked blonde wig.

“It’s not delinquents who are robbing, but nice people,” Levi said. “The people think they have a right to steal. They think the country owes them something.”

American soldiers and military police tried to protect government buildings and banks. Noriega loyalists fought back from pockets of stiff resistance scattered throughout the city. U.S. troops held a defensive position on the steps of a synagogue.

Armored personnel carriers surrounded the Cuban Embassy, and U.S. soldiers barred reporters. American officials said they were trying to keep Noriega from seeking asylum with the Cubans or Nicaraguans.

Truckloads of Panamanians cheered American troops stationed around the Nicaraguan Embassy. The Panamanians waved white flags--symbols of opposition to Noriega. Nicaraguan officials on a second-floor balcony watched as two of the trucks collided near an armored personnel carrier, nearly spilling their loads of booty.

A Nicaraguan diplomat, Manuel Rodriguez, said: “We cannot trust our security to an invading force. This is an occupying army that cannot protect anyone.”

Twenty minutes earlier, Rodriguez said, American soldiers had stopped a Mercedes Benz with diplomatic license plates leaving the embassy and questioned the diplomat who was driving. He said the brief interrogation violated international law.

Rodriguez said that neither Noriega nor any members of his defunct government nor anyone in his Panama Defense Forces had sought refuge in the Nicaraguan Embassy.

Mario Rognioni, a friend and former aide to Noriega, said in a telephone interview that he does not recognize the new U.S.-backed government of Guillermo Endara, who was sworn in as president Tuesday night at a U.S. military base.

When asked who was in charge of Panama now, Rognioni replied flatly: “Colin Powell.” Powell is chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

And Endara?

“You must be joking,” Rognioni said. “Endara might end up in charge, but he’s not now. All of Latin America has turned against him.”

Rognioni said gunmen had hijacked his car during the chaos. While some shopkeepers said much of the looting had been directed by members of Noriega’s paramilitary shock troops, known as Dignity Battalions, Rognioni declared the battalions had gone underground to become guerrilla fighters.

He also denied U.S. declarations that the Panamanian Defense Forces had disbanded.

“The armed forces had orders that if the Americans invaded, they should automatically disappear,” he said. “They knew they could not fight the Americans. They were to leave their barracks and go into a guerrilla army with several commanders . . . (and) with specific objectives, to fight until the end.”

While some of the stealing might have been politically motivated, other banditry seemed nonpartisan. Endara’s opposition movement was dominated by businessmen and merchants who own many of the stores that suffered damage.

But at the same time, residents also sacked the offices of Carlos A. Wittgreen, a prominent Panamanian with business ties to Noriega. Wittgreen’s offices were tear-gassed and searched by U.S. troops, who closed them and left. Neighbors with sledgehammers broke their way in at dusk and made off with the furniture.

Inside the small building were boxes full of handcuffs and buttons saying Adelante con Noriega --Onward with Noriega.

Efforts to maintain security were indiscriminate as well. Men toting shotguns guarded a tire warehouse, while down the block a fancy Sara’s department store was gutted by civilians. Some carried away their loot in Sara’s elegant shopping bags. A number of thieves continued selling their wares at sidewalk stands.

Motorists jammed gasoline stations and forced owners to fill their tanks. Private vehicles sped through traffic lights, drivers apparently afraid to stop and risk having their cars stolen.

The looters drew spectators on Avenida Central. U.S. military police watched the pillage, and Panamanians criticized them for failing to act.

“We don’t have a country right now. We are in the hands of thugs. We have absolutely no protection. The American troops don’t give a damn about us,” said Deborah Maduro, a housewife in the upper-middle-income neighborhood of Nuevo Reparto Carmen, where residents set up their garbage cans as barricades.

“A foreign invasion is not necessarily what people wanted,” offered Luis Alberto Arias, a banker. But he added: “Noriega kept us hostage . . . through fear, intimidation and aggression.”

Others were afraid to give their names. Many said they feared armed civilians still on the loose.

“We do not know if this will come out well or not,” said one man who refused to identify himself. “It’s too early to tell.”

Frequently, American troops were greeted with a V for victory.

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

But many Panamanians were simply scared.

Anja de Obaldia, a lawyer who lives in the San Miguelito area of Panama City, said she has not dared leave her house since the invasion.

Her home is only four blocks from Panama Defense Forces barracks, and she told The Times by telephone that she could hear bombs falling as late as mid-afternoon. “We suppose that it’s North Americans who are doing the bombing,” she said. “But we don’t know exactly. We’re not sure.

“I feel great resentment over the intervention. I believe they should have taken out that man (Noriega), but I would have liked it if fewer Panamanians had died.”

Many Americans were pleased to leave. Jubilant passengers on the first commercial flight from Panama to Miami since the fighting broke out were disheveled and tired.

Many had been guests at the Marriott Hotel in Panama City, which had been under siege.

Some said Marriott employees had helped them hide. Others said they were liberated when U.S. troops took back the hotel.

“The flight back was completely euphoric,” Colin Cleary, who lives in Colombia with his wife and 18-month-old child, told the Associated Press. “We were so grateful to Eastern (Airlines) to get us back. We had been stuck at (Howard Air Base in Panama) since 1 p.m. Thursday. A lot of us were sleeping on the plane, because we haven’t had much sleep.”

Cleary said he had hidden in the hotel laundry when Panamanian troops entered the Marriott on Wednesday. Other Americans were hidden in “safe rooms” by hotel employees, he said.

“I jumped from my room to the fire escape,” said Joe Clark, a Miami businessman. “I hid on the fire escape all Wednesday morning. I remained there until 5:30 or 6.

“The security men from Marriott took me to a safer place. The goons were coming in, and the goons asked him if any Americans were there. I was hiding behind a door.”

Clark said the security men bluffed, and he was taken to safety.

Some passengers said they came under fire as they were transported to the air base.

While some American officials have called the action in Panama “mopping up,” one passenger, Moses Leader, a Jamaican, said it looked like a battle to him. “Downtown Panama is in rubble,” he said. “The Americans underestimated the staying power of the PDF. We had to take cover at the air base.”

Panamanian refugees fleeing the fighting took cover in soccer stadiums, churches and schools in Panama City. “They had water, but we’re very short of food,” said a Red Cross worker. He said U.S. Army units were handing out rations but that it was not enough.

Some refugees pleaded for medicine.

Sometimes the medicine was for injuries inflicted by fellow Panamanians. Dorita Alvarez, a resident of the middle-class El Dorado neighborhood in eastern Panama City, said she encountered violence from her countrymen Wednesday morning while she was driving home from her office with a friend.

She and the friend were stopped by a mob of about 25 people. “They pulled me out of my car by my hair and stole my car,” she said. “They started to beat my friend, who has fair hair and blue eyes. He kept saying, ‘Hang on! I’m a Panamanian.’ ”

Miller reported from Panama City and Meyer from Los Angeles. Staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Los Angeles and Times researcher Anna Virtue in Miami contributed to this story.