100 Marines Exchange Gunfire With Intruders at Panama Base : No One Hurt in 2nd Such Incident in 2 Days, U.S. Reports

About 100 U.S. Marines engaged in a two-hour fire fight Tuesday night with about 40 unidentified intruders at a military fuel tank farm in a jungle area, a U.S. military spokesman said today.

Col. Ron Sconyers, chief public affairs officer for the U.S. Southern Command, told a news conference that there were no apparent injuries on either side in the second reported incident of its kind in two days at the tank farm on Howard Air Force Base.

The fire fight took place at the Arriajan Tank Farm, an 800-acre depot where a Marine was accidentally shot and killed Monday night by Marine gunfire while investigating what U.S. officials called a suspected break-in by six to eight camouflaged men.

Sconyers said a 12-man Marine patrol “reported receiving fire” Tuesday night “from a location where they had observed an estimated 40 to 50 unauthorized personnel.”

Reinforcements Called

“The Marines returned the fire. Sporadic firing continued for about two hours,” Sconyers said.

Sconyers said the Marine patrol summoned reinforcements, who engaged the intruders in small-arms fire, shot three “high-explosive mortar rounds” at their suspected positions and illuminated the area with aerial flares.

Sconyers said the intruders were wearing dark uniforms and “had some kind of military hats,” but he declined to identify them as members of the Panamanian Defense Forces.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that they were PDF,” he said.

Pentagon Statement

Earlier, another Southern Command spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Doug Schamp, told reporters that there is “no reason at all at this time” to suspect Panamanian military involvement in Monday’s shooting incident, in which Cpl. Ricardo M. Villahermosa was killed.

Shortly after that incident, Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard said in Washington that the dead Marine appeared to have been shot accidentally by fellow Marine guards, but he suggested that the incident was sparked by the intrusion of Panamanian military personnel.

Calling those statements “rash and irresponsible accusations,” the Panamanian government Tuesday night rejected them as aimed at justifying “a military intervention.”

The Defense Forces public relations director, Maj. Edgardo Lopez, called Howard’s suggestion “totally false and stupid.”

‘Irrational Mission’

“These lies try to hide from the mothers of Jimmy, of Sammy and of Tommy, their lack of experience in the handling of arms, their desperation and their lack of morale in an irrational mission that they neither understand nor can defend,” Lopez said.

Villahermosa, of Santurce, Puerto Rico, was one of nearly 2,000 Marines and Army personnel sent to Panama in the last few weeks to step up security for the Panama Canal, other U.S. installations and American citizens.