The reporter, Peter Grant, travelling with the 54th Combat Engineers, said the bridge was located "15 miles (25 kilometers) southwest of Baghdad, on the Euphrates."

Civilian road maps indicated that the only dual carriageway (four lane) bridge over the Euphrates to the southwest of Baghdad is at Musayib, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the outskirts of the capital.

Grant said US troops, behind a "screen" of armour and helicopters, captured the bridge virtually intact after "a very fierce fight."

"Half of that dual carriageway bridge is certainly perfectly intact," Grant told BBC radio's Today program.

"And over that, during the hours of darkness, I'm told, 6,000 vehicles rolled. We are well now into the hours of daylight, so many many more have gone across," he said.

He described a scene of "Iraq prisoners on their knees, with American soldiers standing over them, and Iraq dead in the roadway, and yes, American dead being tended on stretchers."

Having stripped off explosive charges from under the bridge, the US engineers planned Thursday to lay a 150-meter (500-foot) pontoon bridge alongside to allow even more US vehicles to cross the Euphrates, he said.

SPACE.WIRE