"It was around six o'clock or so. An official called, and we kind of thought at first it was an April Fool's joke," Greg Lynch told NBC television from Palestine, West Virginia.

"But it turned out to be the real thing, and we were just real tickled."

He said the family was overjoyed at the news that his daughter, a 19-year-old Army private first class, had been plucked Tuesday from an Iraqi-held hospital in Nasiriyah by US troops.

"There was screaming, hollering, and you couldn't hear if you wanted to," Lynch chuckled, but he noted that he was not sure when he would be able to speak with his daughter.

"We're hoping it is today, just to hear her," he told NBC. He said Jessica was to receive medical attention in Germany and would then be sent back to the United States.

Asked what words he had for Jessica's rescuers, Greg Lynch said: "They would get the biggest thanks in the world from us ... They all risked their lives to do this for Jessie."

"We're just glad to have our daughter back," he said, adding wistfully: "It's just sad, because we know that there are casualties involved."

US President George W. Bush was elated at the news, though he expressed concern for other US prisoners of war, a top White House official said.

"That's great!" Bush said after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told him of Lynch's rescue, according to the official, who requested anonymity.

"It was a very good news development, and it was tempered by the fact that there are other POWs that the president cares deeply about," the official said, adding that the rescue lifted spirits at the White House.

Rumsfeld told Bush of the rescue at 4:50 pm (0950 GMT) Tuesday during a regularly scheduled daily telephone briefing on events in the Iraq war, but did not mention the discovery of 11 bodies, possibly other US prisoners, in the vicinity of the hospital where Lynch had been held, the official said.

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