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U.S. OFFICIALS: Strikes Hurt Elite Iraqi Forces
Iraq insists coalition 'being defeated on all fronts'

Monday, March 31, 2003
(1:22 PM ET) (18:22 GMT)
CNN Correspondents Christiane Amanpour, Jane Arraf, Bob Franken, Art Harris, Tom Mintier, Walter Rodgers and Nic Robertson and Producer Mike Mount contributed to this report.

"Where the regime is, we're coming," Brooks said, adding that the threat of suicide bombings "will not stop us."

Smoke billows from a building hit Monday during coalition airstrikes in Baghdad.

DOHA, Qatar -- CNN
An initial battle assessment indicates the Republican Guard's Medina Division -- which includes some of Iraq's most elite forces -- may have been cut in half by repeated bombings, officials at the Pentagon said.

The Medina division is massed south of Baghdad in hopes of blocking an expected onslaught of ground troops from the U.S.-led coalition.

Scores of soldiers from the Republican Guard units around the central Iraqi city of Karbala have surrendered to U.S. forces there, a U.S. military official said. The official said that nearly 50 percent of the Medina Division's tanks had been destroyed.

Additional Republican Guard forces are moving to the region from north of Karbala, U.S. officials said, as elements of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division gather intelligence and periodically engage Iraqi units.
(More: CNN.com)
2003 © Cable News Network LP, LLLP.

Dan