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NEW YORK - Graphic video footage of a badly injured Jessica Lynch and Lori Piestewa, who may have died shortly afterward, was taken by Iraqi state television following the ambush of the soldiers' Army convoy, NBC reported Tuesday night. The video, aired on "NBC Nightly News," shows the two Army privates at the hospital where they were taken following the March 23 ambush of the 507th Maintenance Co. The tape was never aired in Iraq, NBC reported. Piestewa, her face swollen and bruised and her head loosely bandaged, is shown as someone positions her feet, and then her head, for...

Submitted by: 15th MEU Story Identification Number: 200342534427 Story by Cpl. Anthony R. Blanco AN NASIRIYAH, Iraq(April 25, 2003) -- Marines and Sailors of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) are working together with local law enforcements to restore law and order in an area where it has been absent since the start of the war. Some of the first steps in re-establishing the legal system is to clean up the courthouse, institute a police force and start a penal system to help Iraqi's transition from a United States military presence to a local one. To kick things...

Inside Nasiriya's looted orphanages By Jonathan Duffy BBC News Online, in Nasiriya All three of the orphanages in Nasiriya were trashed by looters as soon as the fighting stopped. Now a British aid agency is helping to re-open one of them. With its bedrooms emptied of furniture, the kitchen bare and the bathrooms stripped of everything including the piping, it looks more like one of Saddam's notorious torture complexes. Only the brightly coloured murals pertain to the building's true purpose. But order is slowly returning to this sanctuary for abandoned children. The young residents, scattered by the effects of...

It's too early to say the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has turned sour. But the classic headaches of a military occupation have come on with astonishing speed.Despite months of planning, U.S. forces have shown themselves to be confused about the transition from invading to policing, and unsure about what policing entails. Commanders have been wildly optimistic about the ease of setting up a transitional government. And many Iraqis are signalling that they plan to think for themselves when it comes to designing their country's future.Four weeks into the war, it's still unclear whether Washington is seriously looking for help in...

UR, Iraq (AP) - This is the place where civilization arose, where an ingenious race of people irrigated fields, forged agricultural tools and devised the written word. Some 6,000 years after this glorious beginning, U.S. forces drove sophisticated machines of war through the cradle of mankind. But the fighting, which was heavy in the nearby city of Nasiriyah, spared the sand-swept ruins of Ur and the two families who remain the site's guardians and guides. "We are proud," said Dhief Nauos of his job as custodian of one of Iraq's greatest historic treasures. Five other men standing outside two humble...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Friday it would convene a meeting of Iraqis in the southern city of Nassiriya on Tuesday to discuss the future of Iraq (news - web sites) and an eventual interim authority to govern the country. The meeting, which a U.S. official said was to be chaired by U.S. presidential envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, was expected to be the first in a series Washington aims to organize leading to a Baghdad conference to choose an Iraqi governing authority. It was expected to include Iraqis from inside and outside the country, including opposition figures and...