President Bush was informed of Lynch's rescue at 4:50 p.m. EST on Tuesday during his afternoon call with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "That's great," he told Rumsfeld, according to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. 

During the rescue operation, 11 bodies were recovered in and around the hospital. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed. 

"We have reason to believe some of them were Americans," said Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, another U.S. Central Command spokesman. 

He said the military has not confirmed whether they were members of Lynch's unit, the 507th Maintenance Company. "We don't yet know the identity of those people," Thorp said. "And forensics will determine that." 

Two of the bodies were in a morgue in the hospital, while the nine others were buried outside the building, Brooks said. He said U.S. forces were led to the graves by someone who had been taken into custody. 

Lynch was treated for undisclosed injuries. She is being transferred to the Landstul Regional Medical Center in southwestern Germany and was expected to arrive there about 4 p.m. EST, said Heather Miller, spokeswoman for the 86th Airlift Wing at Ramstein Air Base. 

Brooks would not comment on her condition. But in a green-tinted, night-vision video taken of the rescue operation and shown to reporters Wednesday, she was carried on a stretcher from a helicopter to another aircraft. 

A still photograph showed a folded American flag resting on her as she smiled and looked at the camera. 

An Iraqi pharmacist who works at Saddam Hospital told Britain's Sky television that he treated Lynch for leg injuries but that she was otherwise healthy and that "every day I saw her crying about wanting to go home." 

The pharmacist, who gave his name only as Imad, told the TV network that Lynch knew the U.S. troops were on the other side of the Euphrates River and "she kept wondering if the American Army were coming to save her." 

Until Tuesday, Lynch had been listed as missing in action, and her family did not know whether she was dead or alive. 

"You would not believe the joys, cries, bawling, hugging, screaming, carrying on," Lynch's cousin Pam Nicolais said after the rescue. "You just have to be here." 

The rescue operation included Air Force pilots, Marines, Navy SEALS, Army Rangers - "loyal to the creed they know that they never leave a fallen comrade," Brooks said. 

"Some brave souls put their lives on the line to carry this out," Brooks said. 

U.S. military officials said a battle that was going on in the Nasiriyah area at the same time was related to the rescue. That raised questions whether the battle was a diversionary action to allow the commandos to slip into the hospital. 

The 507th was attacked March 23 during some of the earliest fighting in Nasiriyah, where Saddam's Fedayeen loyalists and other hardcore Iraqi fighters are said to have dressed as civilians and ambushed Americans. 

Not long after the ambush, five of Lynch's comrades showed up in Iraqi television footage being asked questions by their captors. 

The video also showed bodies, apparently of U.S. soldiers, leading Pentagon officials to accuse Iraq of executing some of its POWs. Officials believe the video was made in the Nasiriyah area. 

Lynch, an aspiring teacher from Palestine, W.Va., joined the Army to get an education, her family said. She left a farming community with an unemployment rate of 15 percent, one of the highest levels in West Virginia. 

She was following in the footsteps of her older brother Gregory, a National Guardsman based at Fort Bragg, N.C. Jessica Lynch enlisted through the Army's delayed-entry program before graduating from high school. 

Marines seized the hospital early Wednesday under light sniper fire. As soon as they rolled into the hospital compound, civilian patients and medical staff began emerging with their hands up. Most were allowed to leave, or to return into the building for treatment. 

"We hope your city will return to normal, and that you will no longer live in fear," Brig. Gen. Rick Natonski, commander of the Marine's Task Force Tarawa, told doctors gathered outside the large and relatively modern desert town hospital, where many of the windows were blown out after days of bombing and artillery strikes nearby. "We want to return Iraq to Iraqis."