you can totally do that whole area in stealth, thats how i got through it
I tried it probably 10+ times and each time there were just gobs (as in 4+) of guys standing at the choke point to the next section. Tossing a brick or bottle to lure them out to allow me to pass didn't work either. I mean I would have tried even more but I was kinda rushing it to beat the game tonight because it was a rental.
When I buy the game in the future for another play through I'll try that again and see if I can't get it to work. Same goes for the other two sections I was sad that I had to fight through. I enjoyed having stealth be an option for so much of the game where it was barely an option in Uncharted.