US rescues PoW, finds bodies in midnight raid

US forces rescued a female army soldier held captive for 10 days and recovered the bodies of at least two American soldiers in a midnight raid on an Iraqi hospital, officials said yesterday.

The rescued soldier, Private First Class Jessica Lynch, 19, from Palestine, West Virginia, had been with a maintenance convoy ambushed by Iraqi forces on March 23. She was rescued from a hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya.

A grainy film clip shown during the daily briefing at US military headquarters in Qatar showed the injured Lynch being taken by stretcher to a Black Hawk helicopter.

"At this point she is safe. She is retrieved," said Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, who described a midnight special operations rescue mission involving US Army Rangers, air force and combat patrols.

"Some brave souls put their lives on the line." Captain Jay La Rossa, spokesman for the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, told a Reuters reporter near Nassiriya that Lynch had two broken legs and one broken arm, but was stable and in good condition.

La Rossa said special forces involved in the rescue also found the bodies of two US soldiers and eight Iraqis. He said the identities of the Americans were not known but they were thought to be among those ambushed with Lynch's group.

Brigadier General Brooks, however, said US forces found the remains of 11 people, two in the morgue and the others in a grave outside the hospital. He said a forensic investigation was under way to determine their identities.

"Coalition forces were escorted to those locations by someone taken into custody during the assault," Brooks said.

Military sources said Marines staged a decoy attack to allow special forces to rescue Lynch from the hospital in Nassiriya, where US-led forces have faced stiff resistance from Iraqi fighters.

"US Marines sent a large force led by tanks and armoured personnel carriers to hit targets in the centre of the city and to seize a key bridge over the Euphrates while the hospital raid was under way," a military source said.

The source said there were no injuries on the Marine side, which met little or no resistance from Iraqi forces.

Lynch was one of 15 soldiers listed as missing, captured or killed when a 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company convoy made a wrong turn and came under attack from Iraqi tanks and fighters.

Five of the captives, but not Lynch, were shown on Iraqi television as well as the bloodied bodies of up to eight men, prompting President George W. Bush to warn Iraqis they would be punished as "war criminals" if they mistreated US prisoners.

Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for US commander General Tommy Franks, said of the other PoWs: "I can't get into operational details, but we have a lot more work to do. We have a lot more PoWs that we are still worried about."

A military source told a Reuters reporter travelling with the Marines near Nassiriya that Lynch had been held at the Saddam Hospital, two kilometres north of the Euphrates river which runs through the city.

Brooks said the hospital was "a place that was used by the regime as a military post". He said troops found ammunition, mortars and maps there, among other things.

In Washington, White House spokeswoman Suzy DeFrancis said President Bush was informed of the rescue by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and reacted by saying: "That's great".

Lynch's father lavished praise on the special forces who stormed the hospital to rescue his daughter.

"We are just real proud that they risked their lives to go in and save our daughter and we hope all the rest of the troops come home safely too," Greg Lynch said.

Colonel David Rubenstein, commander of the Landstuhl Regional Military Medical Centre in Germany, said: "At this point, we do expect her to come through Landstuhl as she makes her way back to the United States."