Replies

Fox, CNN says they don't know who the 11 bodies are. MSNBC says all 11 are Americans. What gives?

I want to hear more about the 9 Marines lost in the attempt.

This shouldn't be hidden from us. This is what the military does.

I still don't trust the politicos on this one. Why did they call a news conference and drag it out for 90 minutes. I'm afraid that was politics to counter the lies in the media on the "pause" and "plans" etc.

"I'm not sure where she is, but I'm sure she is being looked at medically to make sure she is alright," said Jean Offutt, spokeswoman for the U.S. military at Fort Bliss, Texas, where Lynch was based.

"If she were wounded, she would be cared for until she were stable and then returned to the United States."

Military sources said on Wednesday U.S. Marines staged a decoy attack on targets in Nassiriya to allow special forces to rescue her from a hospital in the embattled southern city where U.S.-led forces have faced stiff resistance from Iraqi fighters.

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

Brigadier General Vincent Brooks announced the rescue at command headquarters in Qatar at around 3 a.m. local time (7 p.m. EST Tuesday), telling reporters in a prepared statement:

"Coalition forces have conducted a successful rescue mission of a U.S. Army prisoner of war held captive in Iraq...The soldier has been returned to a coalition-controlled area."

Military officials would not discuss the fate of the other captives, but CNN reported that Lynch's rescue team also brought out the bodies of up to 11 people believed to be U.S. soldiers.

Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for U.S. 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."

Wilkinson said Lynch was rescued around midnight Iraq time (4 p.m. EST Tuesday).

A military source told a Reuters reporter traveling with the Marines near Nassiriya the facility where Lynch was being held was called the Saddam Hospital and was one mile north of the Euphrates river which runs through the city.

The Marines' decoy attack involved a number of targets, including an artillery and air attack on a Baath party headquarters, which the source said was destroyed.

They also hit the home of a local Baath party official, a telecommunications cable repeater station and a headquarters of the Fedayeen paramilitary organization.

"These were all destroyed," the source said, adding that there were no injuries on the Marine side, which met little or no resistance from Iraqi forces.

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

Offutt said she understood Lynch had spoken with her parents. "They are very happy to hear from her, joyful."

"The fact that she was found gives a lot of the other parents hope," she added.

The military told the family Lynch had "walked into an Iraqi hospital" after going missing, but "we were told nothing else," relative Terri Edwards told Reuters.