Word: comandancia
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Inevitably there were mistakes. Many paratroopers missed their landing zones. The shelling of Noriega's Comandancia headquarters destroyed houses in the adjacent Chorrillo neighborhood, where many poor people live. Air attacks on the San Miguelito area were devastating. The U.S. embassy said 300 Panamanian civilians died (unofficial estimates go as high as 800), an alarming toll. Many Panamanians criticized the failure of the Americans to move against the looting that engulfed Panama City. "There should have been troops placed along commercial arteries," complained Steve Maduro, a past director of Panama's Chamber of Commerce. "Our police force was nonexistent...
...around 12:15 a.m. Wednesday, residents of century-old wooden houses ringing Noriega's sprawling P.D.F. headquarters, called the Comandancia, were startled by the roar of circling U.S. AC-130 combat Talon gunships and attack choppers, then the rumble of tanks in the streets. The tanks fired barrage after barrage at Noriega's official lair, and the sky was lit by antiaircraft tracers. The streets soon began to fill as terrified residents ran out of their flaming houses. An unknown number died in their homes; many were injured. Meanwhile, U.S. infantry units at Fort Amador opened fire with howitzers against...
TASK FORCE BAYONET. This mechanized battalion and light tank force attacked the P.D.F. headquarters with a vengeance, igniting a huge fire that gutted the main Comandancia building. When the bombardment was over, its troops searched the building room by room -- and found no one. By 8 a.m. Wednesday, Powell felt confident enough to proclaim that "for the most part, organized resistance has ended...
...jeeps and canvas-covered military trucks roared up Avenue A in Panama City and disgorged armed troops at the headquarters of the Panama Defense Forces. The soldiers joined 200 others stationed there, and gunfire soon erupted inside and outside the building. Within 90 minutes, the rebels had seized the Comandancia, as it is known locally, and trapped Panamanian strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega in a small part of the compound. At 11:30, the insurgents issued a statement on national radio proclaiming their coup a success...
...role. Two hours after the coup collapsed, Noriega offered his version of events. "This is part of the continuing aggression and penetration of the P.D.F. by the U.S.," he charged on national television. As evidence, the general's supporters pointed to U.S. Army helicopters that passed close to the Comandancia during the fighting and the hundreds of troops who were deployed, within areas under U.S. jurisdiction, in positions blocking two of the roads leading into the city. That forced Noriega's allies to use alternate routes to transport loyal units from the elite Battalion 2000 to the fighting...
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