"She basically has amnesia, and has mentally blocked out the horrible things we strongly believe she went through," a US official told the network.

The 19-year-old army supply clerk "appeared to have been beaten up pretty badly, and is still in immense pain," the report said.

Psychiatrists and members of her military unit who survived the ambush in which she was captured have been brought in in an effort to help her recover her memory, it said.

Lynch, a Private First Class with the 507th Maintenance Company, was rescued April 1 from an Iraqi-held hospital in the southern town of Nasiriyah where she had been held for more than a week.

Iraqi forces had ambushed her company, operating in support of the advancing 3rd Infantry Division, on March 23 after it took a wrong turn near Nasiriyah.

In the firefight that preceded her capture, Lynch is said to have fought fiercely after sustaining multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die.

When rescued she had a broken arm, two broken legs, spinal injuries, and damage to her foot and ankle. She is now recovering in the United States.

The small-town girl from West Virginia who joined the army to earn money for college has become something of national hero in the United States. Her story will be turned into a movie, Hollywood sources say.

Seven other US POWs in the Iraq war -- five other members of Lynch's company and two helicopter pilots -- were discovered north of Baghdad on April 13 and returned to the United States six days later.

SPACE.WIRE