Witnesses Tell of Night of Terror, Destruction : Panama: Residents report being torn from sleep by the thunder of gunfire and by U.S. warnings to evacuate.

First came American gunships, thundering through the night, pounding their way toward the strongman’s lair. On loudspeakers, crews shouted to residents around army headquarters: Evacuate!

From wooden homes in the slums surrounding Gen. Manuel A. Noriega’s Panama Defense Forces compound in Panama City, men, women and children scurried out into the streets, fear in their eyes, the first refugees of the fight.

American soldiers in trucks and armored personnel carriers led them to shelter, many into churches. The skies filled with tracer fire. Bombs exploded. Heavy-weapons fire filled the air. Eyewitnesses to the U.S. invasion of Panama called it a fearsome sight, a time of death and chaos.

They told their stories Wednesday by telephone and in person to news services, television networks and newspapers. The stories were accounts of pain, terror, hostage-taking, destruction and looting. Most were anxious stories, told from hiding. After a sleepless night of searing gunfire, many Panamanians were afraid to leave their homes.

TV footage showed why: Helicopters flew in formation, low over rooftops. Cargo planes crisscrossed overhead. Blood stained the streets. Panamanians in blue jeans and tennis shoes carried their wounded, lying on litters. One woman fled headlong, away from gunfire, her infant in her arms.

American soldiers in camouflage crouched as the ground shook. Gunfire crackled. One GI in aviator-style sunglasses aimed his rifle from behind a tree.

The sound of fighting abated shortly before noon, residents said, but occasional explosions continued to echo throughout the Panama City area. Some residents reported that U.S. gunships were still flying overhead at midday.

“The streets are totally deserted,” Cynthia Robles told The Times in a telephone interview. “No one dares to go out of doors,” said Robles, a housewife who lives with her husband and family in the suburban neighborhood of La Loma. “People are afraid. No one knows what could happen.”

A 56-year-old retired laboratory technician reported that she continued to hear sporadic gunfire late Wednesday night, coming from the part of Panama City known as Old Panama. It was interrupted by the wail of ambulances.

The woman, who asked The Times to identify her only by her first name, Mercedes, said some of her friends ventured out during the day only to be shocked by the looting they found. As night fell, she said people in her neighborhood turned down their lights and guarded their cars and homes.

Many of the scores of Panamanians killed were civilians. Their bodies lined the floor of hospital morgues.

Dr. Albert Spanziola, a doctor at Santo Tomas Hospital, said refugees seeking shelter and wounded civilians were swamping emergency medical facilities. He said fighting and marauding gangs were making it hard for ambulances to wend their way through the city.

“We are having problems with medical supplies,” Spanziola told CNN, “and we are running out of food here in the hospital.”

In a telephone interview with the network, an American who asked not to be identified told this story:

He was in the nightclub late Tuesday at the Marriott Hotel in Panama City when eight men in dark clothing and ski masks pushed they way in, carrying Uzi and AK-47 assault rifles and rocket launchers.

They fired the weapons and forced Panamanians and Americans alike to crawl out into the hotel lobby. The gunmen ordered all Americans to stand. None did, and the Panamanians among the hostages did not single any Americans out.

After driving all the hostages to a nearby house and holding them for 4 1/2 hours, the gunmen declared: “OK, we’re leaving.”

The hostages were freed.

American firepower set the wooden slum buildings around Noriega’s four-story yellow military compound ablaze. A 15-story apartment building next door went up in flames. It sent dense smoke into the night sky.

The slum area was leveled, witnesses said.

“They burned everything down,” Manuel Backalt told the Associated Press. “I see plenty people dead in the street.”

He said most of the bodies appeared to be members of Noriega’s much-dreaded Dignity Battalions, violent paramilitary groups loyal to the Panamanian strongman.

Speaking through an interpreter, Rolando Diaz told the AP that he had heard the American warning. “Before they started to bomb, they warned (those in the area of the defense forces headquarters) to come out,” he said. “They were shouting down, over the PA (public address) system.”

Most residents of the slums ran into the streets, he said. “American soldiers led them to a neighborhood church.”

In her interview with The Times, Cynthia Robles said she and her husband were awakened at about 1 a.m.

“My husband says, ‘Sounds like there’s a problem.’ I didn’t believe him,” she recalled. “But then when I heard the bombs, I believed him.”

With their children, aged 3, 10 and 13, they spent the night glued to TV and radio. She said her family had enough food for a few days.

Luis Aremillo, a cab driver in the working-class neighborhood of San Miguelito, on the northeastern edge of Panama City, said he stole out briefly to buy a bag of rice in case his family got trapped for several days.

“From 1 in the morning, you could hear ‘boom-boom-boom,’ and the helicopters passing above,” Aremillo told The Times by telephone.

A friend in the Civil Guard told him Americans were attacking army headquarters. Old clapboard houses in the Chorrillo neighborhood around the barracks were catching fire, and people were fleeing.

Aremillo watched as gunships strafed another barracks in San Miguelito. It burned.

An economist with an international agency, who asked that his name not be used, told The Times the situation was tense and confusing.

Looking out his window, he could see looters strolling by with shopping carts full of television sets, shoes and other items stolen from the stores. And he watched others drive by in pickup trucks laden with stolen goods.

Most of the looters, he said, seemed to be poor people.