2003 American troops rescued Jessica Lynch, a 19-year-old Army private, from Iraqi captivity, United States military officials said. Eleven bodies were also found during a US commando raid in an Iraqi hospital. Lynch was seized after her unit, the 507th Maintenance Company, made a wrong turn on March 23 and was ambushed in the Euphrates River city of Nassiriya.
A dozen other members of her unit remain unaccounted for, including five listed as prisoners of war. An intelligence tip led US special operations forces to the hospital in Nassiriya where Lynch was being held, officials said. The military sources said US Marines staged a decoy attack in Nassiriya to allow special forces to rescue Lynch from the hospital. “US Marines sent a large force led by tanks and armoured personnel carriers to hit targets in the centre of the city and to seize a key bridge over the Euphrates while the hospital raid was under way,” a military source said.
Other important events
1860 The first Italian parliament meets at Turin.
1916 German troops overtake Bois de Caillette.
1935 Sir Watson-Watt patents radar.
1937 South Africa prohibits political activity by foreigners in Southwest Africa.
1947 UN Security Council appoints US as trustee for Pacific islands.
1964 Josef Klaus succeeds Alfons Gorbach as chancellor of Austria.
1981 Three oilfields project are launched in Delma Island, UAE.
1982 Argentina captures Falkland Islands.
1986 A bomb rips hole in TWA jetliner over southern Greece, and the blast blows a man, woman and child out of the plane to their deaths.
1988 Philippine coup leader Gregorio ‘Gringo’ Honasan escapes from a prison ship.
1989 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is elected president of Palestine.
1991 British businessman Roger Cooper celebrates freedom after spending five years in an Iranian jail.
1992 Mob boss John Gotti is convicted in New York of murder and racketeering, he is later sentenced to life in prison.
1993 US and Nato allies approve enforcement of a UN-imposed no-fly zone over Bosnia.
1994 Vladimir Zhirinovsky is declared leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party in Russia.
1995 A top Hamas commander Kamal Kheil dies in a bomb blast in Gaza.
1999 Nato missiles destroy police headquarters in the heart of Belgrade.
2000 French archaeologists announce the discovery of a 4,000-year-old queen’s pyramid south of Cairo.
2005 Pope John Paul II dies at age 84 in his Vatican apartment.
2006 Iran conducts its second major test of a new missile within days
2007 Kuwait’s new education minister, Nouriya Al Sabeeh, takes oath in parliament.
2012 A Russian jet crashes and bursts into flames moments after taking off from Surgut, Siberia, killing 31 people.
2013 A fire engulfs a mosque housing Muslim schoolchildren in Yangon, Myanmar, killing at least 13.
2014 Two bombs explode in quick succession near Cairo University killing a police general.
2015 Iran and world powers agree on the framework of a potentially historic deal after marathon talks in Switzerland.
2016 Four Emiratis are killed when their vehicle crashes head-on into a truck in the Auwafyah area of Oman’s Adam province.
2017 An 11-kilometre Chenani-Nashri Tunnel linking the Kashmir Valley opens, it becomes India’s longest tunnel.
