DOHA, Qatar, 4 April 2003 — “She’s alive,’’ read the note from an Iraqi hospital worker.
Acting on that tip, relayed to the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, US Special Forces drew up and carried out a bold plan to rescue Pfc. Jessica Lynch from captivity at Saddam Hospital in Al-Nassiriyah, Iraq, defense officials and reports from the battlefield revealed Wednesday.
The commando raid, carried out Tuesday night in a blaze of gunfire, relied on at least two informants inside the rundown hospital, one of whom led the special forces to the room where a frightened, wounded Lynch was being held, US officials said. Shown in a photograph shortly after her rescue, the 19-year-old West Virginian was smiling wanly, a US flag folded on her chest. She was flown to a US military hospital at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where she was reported to be in stable condition, recovering from injuries said to include broken legs, a broken arm and at least one gunshot wound.
Lynch’s rescue was a triumphant moment for US forces trying to unseat Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, although it came with a disturbing downbeat. After Lynch had been taken to a waiting helicopter outside the building, special forces found two bodies in the hospital morgue, and dragooned an Iraqi captured at the outset of the operation to lead them to nine others buried outside. At least some are believed to be Americans, possibly members of Lynch’s squad.
The bodies were removed and are being examined to determine their identities, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said.
Both the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA had sources in the hospital who provided tips about Lynch’s whereabouts, one US intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The agencies “provided some people’’ to rescue forces to help them get into the hospital and find their way around inside, the official said.
Britain’s Sky Television quoted an Iraqi pharmacist who worked at Saddam Hospital as saying he treated Lynch for leg injuries, that she wondered if the American army that she knew was nearby would save her and that she cried a lot. “Every day I saw her crying about wanting to go home,’’ he told the network.
The involvement of Iraqi nationals was just one element of what officials described as a complicated and carefully choreographed operation in which US Marines on the perimeter of Al-Nasariyah launched a noisy midnight attack to create a diversion for the stealth special forces rescue team.
Then, under cover of darkness, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and Marines landed a Black Hawk helicopter in the courtyard of the hospital, shot their way into the building under heavy fire and moved to the room where the wounded Lynch lay.
“There was not a firefight inside of the building, I will tell you, but there were firefights outside of the building, getting in and getting out,’’ said Brooks, deputy director of operations for US Central Command in Doha. He said there were no US casualties in the mission. Once inside, the US forces grabbed Lynch, strapped her to a stretcher and carted her to the waiting chopper. She was airlifted out while elements of the rescue team remained behind to search the hospital. The rescue was filmed by a combat camera crew that accompanied the assault team and produced eerie, green-tinted images through a night-vision lens.
