"We believe nine were American," Major Rumi Nielson-Green said here at US Central Command's forward planning base.

The US Defense Department in Washington reported Saturday that eight US soldiers ambushed last month with the recently rescued private Jessica Lynch have been confirmed as killed in action.

US forces discovered 11 bodies in a hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah during an operation in the early hours of April 2 to free Lynch, who had been held prisoner for more than a week.

"We believe the other two bodies were Iraqi and they have been returned to the hospital from whence they came," Nielson-Green said.

She said the remains of the US soldiers were to be returned to Dover Air Force in Maryland on the US east coast for official identification. She was unable to say which unit they had been serving with nor the circumstances surrounding their deaths.

Lynch, who is now receiving medical treatment at a US military hospital in Germany, was a member of a logistics unit that was ambushed by Iraqi forces near Nasiriyah on March 23.

SPACE.WIRE