Word: noriega
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...Wednesday's H hour approached, huge military transports were landing at ten-minute intervals at Howard Air Force Base, doubtless alerting Noriega that a U.S. strike might soon be under way. Pentagon spokesmen dismissed the airlift as a routine exercise. But total surprise had never loomed large in Pentagon planning, which depended on vastly superior manpower, firepower and speedy execution...
...initial phases of Operation Just Cause went off as planned. Shortly before midnight Tuesday, guests at Panama City's ritzy Marriott Caesar Park Hotel were awakened by sporadic shooting. A team of Navy SEALs (sea, air and & land capability) rushed the nearby private Paitilla Airport, where Noriega kept a potential getaway Learjet. In a brief but vicious firefight the SEALs overwhelmed guards, secured the landing strip and destroyed the aircraft. But four SEALs were killed, perhaps the earliest casualties of the conflict. Other SEALS died while disabling boats Noriega could have used to make an escape...
...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...
...forces then focused on the plight of hostages who had been seized by Noriega's men. At the Marriott a foreign journalist was approached at about 12:25 a.m. Wednesday by three gunmen in ski masks and civilian clothes. They ordered her to join eleven other guests, including seven Americans being held hostage in the hotel by thugs toting AK-47s. They were marched into a van, driven to a house and held in a kitchen for three hours. "You're bombing our children; you're bombing our people," one told the Americans. "If we were in another country...
Elsewhere, a boat filled with Noriega gunmen landed at one of the San Blas islands off Panama's Caribbean coast and took hostage eleven people working at a Smithsonian Institutions marine-research project. The group, including five Americans, was taken to the mainland and forced to march into the jungle. Next day, they were abandoned without food and finally rescued. At the international airport two terrified American women were threatened with death by a group of 30 P.D.F. soldiers, who used them as a shield against U.S. paratroopers surrounding the terminal. The two were freed just before dawn after...