Saving Private Lynch a daring rescue by Rangers and Navy Seals

IT’s already been dubbed Saving Private Lynch.

The rescue operation which saw Pte Jessica Lynch, 19, freed more than a week after she and other members of her maintenance unit were captured in Iraq, involved a massive decoy

operation. US military officials said Pte Lynch was rescued in a daring midnight raid by a group of US Army Rangers and Navy Seals.

US officials plucked Pte Lynch from an Iraqi hospital while US Marines, tanks and armoured vehicles attacked the centre of the Nassiriya in a decoy operation. Eleven bodies were found with Pte Lynch during the rescue operation, they said.

A dozen other members of Pte Lynch's 507th Maintenance Company remain unaccounted for after they were ambushed by Iraqi forces on March 23.

Five of them are officially listed as prisoners of war. The US forces fought their way into and out of the hospital on Tuesday night, but there were no coalition casualties, said Brig Gen Vincent Brooks at US Central Command yesterday.

He said ammunition, mortars, maps and a terrain model were found at the hospital, along with "other things that made it very clear it was being used as a military command post."

US spokesman Captain Frank Thorp said there was "reason to believe" some of the bodies were American. "In the same operation we recovered 11 bodies in and around the facility. We don't yet know the identity of those people. And forensics will determine that," he said.

He added that the 11 dead were not killed during the rescue. A military source on the ground at Nassiriya said they had found two dead Americans, thought to have been from the same convoy as Pte Lynch.

News of the operation was relayed to President George Bush by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He replied: "That's great."

After the operation Pte Lynch was flown to a field hospital, where she was said to be doing well.

There were conflicting reports of her injuries. US military officials at Central Command were unable to confirm reports that she had suffered three broken limbs and gunshot wounds.

However, an Iraqi pharmacist who treated Pte Lynch at a Nasiriyah hospital yesterday claimed she had been well looked after. The pharmacist, who works at the Saddam Hussein hospital in the city, told Sky TV in an interview that Pte Lynch had cried every day and said she was missing her family.

The pharmacist, who gave his name as Imad, said Pte Lynch had not received any visits from the Iraqi military during her 10 day stay at the hospital.

"She was very healthy and every day I saw her crying about wanting to go home. She was very sad about her family. Her only injuries were on her leg. No soldiers came to visit her only me and the doctors.

"Every day I asked her if she needed anything, but she always asked when she could go home. She knew the army were on the other side of the river. She kept wondering if the American army were coming to save her. We asked her why. We told her we were taking care of her."