U.S. forces rescue POW in Iraq
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One of the woman soldiers. I'm not sure I want to know what they did to her.
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Woman, 19, was member of Army unit
ambushed March 23 near An Nasiriyah
BREAKING NEWS
MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
DOHA, Qatar, April 2 — Ending a week of agony for one soldier’s
family, U.S. troops in Iraq rescued an American prisoner of
war, a U.S. Central Command spokesman said early
Wednesday. The spokesman, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, did
not immediately reveal the identity of the rescued prisoner, but
military sources told NBC News that the rescued soldier was
Pfc. Jessica Lynch, one of eight soldiers who vanished after
their convoy was attacked.
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BROOKS READ A brief statement saying that a prisoner had
been rescued but provided no details about the operation.
But sources, who spoke with NBC News on condition of
anonymity, said that Lynch, 19, of Palestine, W.Va., was rescued
overnight near An Nasiriyah. The sources said she was not harmed
by her captors or during the rescue.
The Pentagon had listed seven prisoners of war through
Tuesday, but Lynch was not among them. She and seven other
members of the Army’s 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company
were listed as missing in action after Iraqi soldiers managed to
separate their vehicles from the rest of a maintenance convoy near
An Nasiriyah in southern Iraq on March 23.
Five other soldiers from that convoy, one of them a woman,
were later shown being questioned on Iraqi television, and the dead
bodies of several others also were displayed. Pentagon officials
charged that those servicemen were executed, a charge denied by
Iraq.
Fears for the safety of the prisoners and the missing soldiers
increased last Friday when U.S. Marines found shredded remains of
at least one female U.S. military uniform at a hospital in An
Nasiriyah that had been used by Iraqi forces.
In another part of the hospital, Marines found a large battery
next to a bed — leading them to suspect it was used as a torture
device, NBC’s Kerry Sanders reported.
The hospital was taken by the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, after
a fierce battle with Iraqi forces there.
The known female POW is Spc. Shoshana Johnson, 30, of Fort
Bliss, Texas.
The other maintenance convoy soldiers listed as POWs are:
Spc. Joseph Hudson, 23, of Alamogordo, N.M.; Pfc. Patrick Miller,
23, of Park City, Kan.; Edgar Hernandez, 21, supply truck driver, of
Mission, Texas, rank unknown; and Sgt. James Riley, 31, of
Pennsauken, N.J. The soldiers are part of the 507th Maintenance
Company at Fort Bliss, Texas.
In addition, two pilots were captured on March 23 when their
Apache attack helicopter went down in central Iraq. They, too, were
seen on Iraqi television.
FACT FILE
Geneva Convention on P.O.W.s
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