Pentagon Puts Panama Civilian Deaths at 220 : Invasion: Estimate suggests 10 died for each U.S. soldier who fell. Defense Forces losses are put at 314.

The Pentagon, in its first accounting of non-military casualties in last month’s U.S. invasion of Panama, said Tuesday that about 220 Panamanian civilians were killed in the fighting that followed the assault by 27,000 American troops.

At the same time, the Pentagon estimated that 314 members of the Panama Defense Forces were killed.

The estimate of civilian deaths, which is almost certain to add new fuel to the controversy over the cost of the U.S. action, suggests that almost 10 Panamanian civilians died for each of the 23 U.S. soldiers who were killed.

Pentagon spokesman Robert Hall disputed estimates that have placed the number of killed Panamanian civilians as high as 1,200. He noted that the American estimate of 220 was slightly higher than the 203 estimated by the Panamanian Institute for Legal Medicine, which records and investigates all suspicious or violent deaths in the country.

Both the U.S. and the institute’s estimates included victims who may have been looters, out-of-uniform members of the Panama Defense Forces or those belonging to Gen. Manuel A. Noriega’s armed “Dignity Battalions.”

“We cannot guarantee to you that they were all civilians,” State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said. “If it was a PDF member in civilian clothes . . . that has not been sorted out.”

In reaching their estimate, American military investigators visited civilian hospitals and relief agencies and reviewed death records of Panamanian civilians since Dec. 20, when the invasion began.

Defense officials said they were confident that independent estimates would support the Pentagon’s count. The Panamanian Red Cross is investigating the numbers of civilian deaths and casualties.

The highest estimate came from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who alleged in a television interview Monday that the United States had killed 1,200 persons. Many of them, he said, were buried in mass graves.

Jackson did not say where his estimate came from, but a spokesman later said that the data had been provided by the New York-based Caribbean Action Lobby, which canvassed Panamanian funeral homes and hospitals. Efforts to reach officials of the group Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Officials at the State and Defense departments said they could not determine whether the Panamanian civilians were killed by U.S. or Panamanian troops. But Pentagon officials and returning soldiers said that U.S. forces operated under orders designed to minimize the numbers of civilian casualties.

One Administration source said, for instance, that planners of the operation prohibited the use of “indirect-fire weapons,” which lob their ordnance over longer distances but with uncertain accuracy. Only the AC-130 gunship, an aircraft that fires at ground targets with high accuracy, was authorized to initiate fire against such targets, officials said.

The strictures also included “rules of engagement” that most soldiers interpreted to mean that they must be shot at before they could open fire on Panamanians in or out of uniform.

“We were briefed once, and the (guidelines) were too broad,” said Sgt. Kenneth Jeffries, an artilleryman with the 7th Light Infantry Division who returned earlier this week from Panama to his home base at Ft. Ord, Calif. “You let yourself get shot (at) first before you shot back, if you wanted to make sure you didn’t go to jail. If we had been in heavy firing, I think my unit would have been in some trouble.”

In one instance, defense officials said that a young Army Ranger burst into a roomful of unarmed Panama Defense Forces recruits and held fire long enough to ascertain that none of the frightened troops were armed.

In other instances, soldiers said that isolated snipers hid among crowds of Panamanian well-wishers and shot at U.S. convoys as they passed. The U.S. troops were told they could not return fire under such conditions.

“We were told if we felt we were in danger and there was no alternative, we could use what force was needed,” said Spec. 4 Charlie Harris, a paratrooper who returned Monday to Ft. Bragg, N.C. “But everybody out there was nervous; it was an urban area. A lot of guys got out and shot first, asked questions later.”

Although Harris said he knew of one case in which a Panamanian was mistakenly shot, he added that U.S. troops were more often injured as a result of the inexperience of many of their comrades.

“We had a lot of friendly fire,” Harris said. “A couple of guys got hit.”

Pentagon officials said the United States intends to compensate the Panamanian families of those who died. One Administration official said such compensation would be extraordinary in a situation in which civilians became casualties of combat.

In the Vietnam War, however, the United States in many cases issued small “solatium payments,” which did not admit any liability on the part of U.S. forces, to the families of civilians killed during combat operations.

SEARCH CONTINUES--Panamanians are still looking for missing relatives. A7