On the night of 24–25 March, the bulk of the Marines of Regimental Combat Team 1 passed through the city over the bridges and attacked north towards Baghdad.

Nasiriyah is a city which lies along the banks of the Euphrates River in Dhi Qar Province, about 225 mi (362 km) southeast of Baghdad; its population is made up almost entirely of Shia Muslims.

On the morning of 23 March, a US Army supply convoy from the 507th Maintenance Company had mistakenly veered off Highway 8 and then turned toward the city into enemy-held territory.

[3] The original plan was for Task Force Tarawa to take and hold the two bridges inside Nasiriyah, creating a corridor for the RCT1 and 6th Engineer Support Battalion from Battle Creek, MI to pass north through the city along Route 7.

The 51st operated in the south covering the oilfields, and the 6th was north near Al Amarah, which left three brigade-sized elements of the 11th ID to guard the An Nasiriyah area.

As the convoy turned left on to Highway 16, at about 07:00, it began to receive sporadic small arms fire, the source and direction of which could not be determined.

At least 15 of the 18 American transport vehicles in the convoy, ranging from Humvees to Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks (HEMTTs), were destroyed by small-arms fire, RPGs, mortar rounds, and tank gunfire.

They rolled up on ten survivors from Group 2 which had also managed to escape the ambush and set up a hasty perimeter about 5 km (3.1 mi) south of the city.

During this action, the Marines captured two bridges spanning the Euphrates River that were defended by Fedayeen Saddam and Ba'ath Party guerrilla troops.

On the evening of 24 March, LAV-25s of the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion (2nd LAR, commanded by Lt. Col. Eddie Ray) pushed north of the Saddam Canal, leading RCT-1 through Ambush Alley.

Meanwhile, the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines (the "Thundering Third", commanded by Lt. Col. Lewis Craparotta) held open Ambush Alley as the rest of RCT-1 passed through Nasiriyah on the night of 24–25 March.

It had apparently plunged into the river when it drove through a gap where a sidewalk was under construction, causing the exposed reinforcing bar to crumble under the weight.

On 3 April, The Washington Post ran a front-page story which read: "Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her".

[30] Jon Krakauer concludes that "most of the details of Lynch's ordeal were extravagantly embellished, and much of the rest was invented from whole cloth... and [were] fed to gullible reporters by anonymous military sources".