(Updates with book details paragraphs 4-5)

By Rosalind Russell

NASSIRIYA, Iraq, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Iraqi doctors who treated U.S. soldier Jessica Lynch dismissed on Monday allegations made in her biography that she was raped during her capture in Iraq, saying she had the best possible care.

Surgeons who treated Private Lynch after her convoy was attacked near the southern city of Nassiriya in the early days of the U.S.-led invasion in March said they were shocked and hurt by accusations that she was sexually assaulted.

In "I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story" published on Tuesday, author Rick Bragg says her medical records indicated Lynch, who was evacuated by helicopter from a Nassiriya hospital in a U.S. commando raid widely publicized throughout the world, had been raped.

"The records also show that she was a victim of anal sexual assault," the authorized biography said. "The records do not tell whether her captors assaulted her almost lifeless, broken body after she was lifted from the wreckage, or if they assaulted her and then broke her bones into splinters until she was almost dead," the book said.

"Jessi's body armor and her bloody uniform were found in a house near the ambush site, the place that some military intelligence sources said she was taken to be tortured. But Jessi remembers none of this. When she awoke in the military hospital, it was during treatment, not torture. When she came to, the cruelties were over," according to the book.

A rocket-propelled grenade attack on Lynch's Humvee military vehicle on March 23 left her with a broken leg, arm and ankle and a gashed head. Eleven soldiers were killed in the attack in which the Humvee crashed into another vehicle.

Dr Jamal Kadhim Shwail was the first doctor to examine Lynch when she was brought to Nassiriya's military hospital by Iraqi special police. Shwail said Lynch was lying in hospital reception, unconscious and in shock from blood loss.

She was wearing her uniform including a flak jacket, military trousers and boots, none of her clothes had been unbuttoned or removed, as the book claims, he said.

"We only had a few minutes to save her life, we found a vein in her neck to give her fluids and blood," Shwail told Reuters at his home in Nassiriya.

A team of doctors treated Lynch, who was given an anesthetic to allow a six-inch (15-cm) cut to her head to be stitched and her fractures realigned. He said her flak jacket was removed and her clothes were cut away to expose the injured sites. The anesthetist cut away an area around her groin to insert a catheter to drain urine.

"IT PAINS US"

Lynch, now 20, was the same age as his eldest daughter Noor, said Shwail. A copy of People magazine with the soldier's smiling face on the cover lay on the couch beside him.

"She was a woman, young and alone in a strange country," he said. "It was our duty to look after her and we did. Now people are saying she was raped ... it pains us." Shwail said he saw no signs of rape but neither was he looking for them.

"The thought did not cross my mind. Her injuries were consistent with severe trauma, a car crash, nothing else. Her clothes were not torn, her boots had not been removed. There is no way (she could have been raped)."

Shortly afterwards Lynch was transferred to Saddam Hospital in Nassiriya, now renamed Nassiriya General.

There, Dr Mahdi Khafazji operated on her fractured right femur. He cleaned her body before surgery and found no signs of sexual assault. "I examined her very carefully," he said at his clinic in Nassiriya's center. "I cleaned her body including her genitalia. She had no sign of raping or sodomizing."

"ASSAULT WOULD HAVE KILLED HER"

Lynch's wounds were so bad a sexual assault would have killed her, he said. "If she had been raped there is no way she could have survived it. She was fighting for her life, her body was broken. What sort of an animal would even think of that?"

While Lynch was in hospital, Nassiriya was hit by fighting. Hundreds of casualties were treated but a senior medical team looked after Lynch with a female nurse at her bedside, Dr Khudair al-Hazbar, then deputy director of the hospital, said.

"It was war, but we cared about her and we did everything we could for her," he said. "I spoke to her every day. She was frightened, but polite to us. I know she is grateful"

On April 1, after Iraqi forces deserted the hospital, it was raided by U.S. forces. The event was filmed by the military through a night-vision lens and Lynch was stretchered away.

"They attacked the hospital at night. There were explosions outside which broke the windows. The patients were terrified," he said. "The Americans knew the Iraqi military had gone so why they didn't come for her quietly, I don't know."

Hazbar, now hospital director, said he was shocked by the rape allegations. "Who is saying this? In our culture, we protect women," he said. "Everyone was very sympathetic towards her. In our culture it is very unusual -- a woman, a soldier."