Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, April 02, 2003
11 Other Bodies Found with Rescued POW
Eleven bodies were found with prisoner of war Jessica Lynch when the Army supply clerk was rescued in a US commando raid on an Iraqi hospital, a military spokesman said Wednesday.
Eleven bodies were found with prisoner of war Jessica Lynch when the Army supply clerk was rescued in a US commando raid on an Iraqi hospital, a military spokesman said Wednesday.
Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, a US Central Command spokesman, said it was not immediately known whether any of the dead were Americans. He said the 11 were not killed during the rescue operation.
Lynch, 19, was seized after her unit, the 507th Maintenance Company, made a wrong turn March 23 and was ambushed in the Euphrates River city of Nasiriyah. A dozen other members of her unit remain unaccounted for, including five listed as prisoners of war.
An intelligence tip led US special operations forces to the hospital in Nasiriyah where Lynch was being held, officials said. Thorp would not confirm reports that troops used a battlefield diversion to slip into the hospital.
He said Lynch was being treated for her injuries at an American military facility Wednesday. He said he had no details on her condition or the nature of her injuries.
"In the same operation we recovered 11 bodies in and around the facility. We don't yet know the identity of those people," Thorp said. "And forensics will determine that."
The 507th was attacked during some of the first fighting in Nasiriyah, where Fedayeen loyalists and other hardcore Iraqi fighters have dressed as civilians and ambushed Americans.