Speaking to reporters before boarding a plane at Charleston, West Virginia, Lynch's mother Deadra said: "I'm real happy about it. ... It's going to be sad, too, because of the circumstances, but ... I can't wait."

A CNN interviewer informed her and her husband Greg that eight comrades in Jessica's unit had been killed in the fighting after initially being listed as missing.

"Our hearts are really saddened for her other troop members, and the other families," Greg Lynch said, before turning away, overcome by emotion.

Private Lynch, 19, whose dramatic rescue from Iraqi captivity turned her into a national heroine, is being treated at a US military hospital at Landstuhl, western Germany.

Her injuries include fractures to her right arm, both legs, her right foot and her right ankle, as well as head and spinal injuries.

Iraqi forces ambushed Lynch's company after it took a wrong turn near the southern city of Nasiriyah.

Initial press reports had quoted a US official as saying she had sustained multiple gunshots wounds and watched other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting when she was captured March 23.

Colonel David Rubenstein, who heads the US military hospital at Landstuhl, could not confirm how her injuries occurred, but said she did not appear to have suffered knife or gunshot wounds as reported shortly after her rescue.

"She was not shot," he told a news conference at Landstuhl.

Lynch's cousin Dan Little told CNN that thorough examination had revealed "small-caliber, low-velocity entry and exit wounds."

SPACE.WIRE