AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar (REUTERS) — Seven American prisoners were found safe and well in Iraq Sunday after their captors apparently fled from U.S. Marines advancing on Saddam Hussein’s crumbling northern bastion of Tikrit.
U.S. officials said the group, comprising all seven people on the U.S. list of prisoners of war in the Iraqi war so far, included five members of an ambushed Army convoy and two pilots of a downed Apache attack helicopter.
The prisoners were found near Samarra, about 40 miles north of Baghdad on the Tikrit road, and were flown to a U.S. air base 55 miles south of Baghdad, and from there to Kuwait.
Three were given medical treatment there, and then all seven were flown to an undisclosed destination. “They were happy, they were smiling; they were in good spirits,” Lt. Col. Ruth Lee, head nurse at the 47th Combat Hospital, told reporters.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that two of them had gunshot wounds but added, “They’re in reasonably good shape.” News of the recovery sparked jubilation in their homes in the United States.
The Pentagon confirmed that they included the sole woman captive, Spc. Shoshana Johnson.
“Someone came up to our Marines moving along the road (from Baghdad) headed for Tikrit and said, ‘Here shortly you’re going to come in contact with a number of Americans, just so you know,”‘ U.S. war commander Gen. Tommy Franks told Fox television.
“The tip came from an Iraqi, and I believe our guys picked them up on the road,” Franks said.
“The guards evidently were deserted by their officers, and the guards themselves brought the prisoners of war to the Marines,” said Lt. Col. Nick Morano at Marine headquarters southeast of Baghdad.
As the former POWs arrived at the air base, a CNN reporter said one soldier raised a fist, and another had his arm in a sling. Five of them ran out of a helicopter but two, apparently injured, walked slowly, including Johnson, who was limping.
ELATED FAMILIES
“We are ecstatic that not only is she safe, but that all the POWs are in U.S. hands,” said her father, Claude Johnson, in a statement read on CNN by a representative for her family.
Johnson, 30, of El Paso, Texas, was among five members of a 15-member Army military maintenance company taken March 23 when their convoy made a wrong turn in southern Iraq and was ambushed by Iraqi forces.
Also in that company was 19-year-old Pfc. Jessica Lynch, rescued from a Nassiriya hospital by U.S. special forces April 1 and now recovering from her wounds in a hospital in Washington.
The Pentagon confirmed the rescue of four others from the convoy — Sgt. James Riley, 31, of Pennsauken, N.J.; Pfc. Patrick Miller, 23, of Walter, Kan.; Spc. Joseph Hudson, 23, of Alamagordo, N.M.; and Spc. Edgar Hernandez, 21, of Mission, Texas.
“I’ve been crying most of the morning. I’m just happy,” said Shane Parker, the brother Patrick Miller.
The other two prisoners were pilots of the 227th Aviation Regiment from Fort Hood, Texas, Chief Warrant Officers Ronald Young Jr., 26, of Lithia Springs, Ga., and David Williams, 30, of Florida. Their Apache helicopter came down March 23.
“I am so pleased for their families and loved ones,” President Bush said as he returned to the White House from the presidential retreat at Camp David.
Ronald Young Sr. told CNN after he viewed television footage of the rescued POWs, “I’m just ecstatic over what I see. Now he’s been recovered. I can’t think of a happier day in my life except when he was born.”
CONVOY AMBUSHED
After the Army convoy was ambushed, Iraqi state television broadcast film of five captives, including Johnson, who nervously answered their captors’ questions. Television also showed at least eight corpses.
The Pentagon said Sunday 114 U.S. troops had been killed in the war to date, 102 in hostile action. A total of 400 American troops have been wounded in action. The Pentagon also said that six U.S. troops were listed as missing.
Young’s mother, Kaye Young, thanked the U.S. military for the rescue and also thanked “the Iraqis who took good care of him,” adding later, “We pray for Saddam Hussein, that his heart will be softened.”
