WASHINGTON, March 31 Kyodo (EDS: ...

WASHINGTON, March 31 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH BRIEFINGS by dint of U.S. MILITARY, IRAQI FOREIGN MINISTER, ADDING DETAILS)

U forces killed about 100 paramilitary fighters in clashes in southern Iraq and seized a large weapons cache near the city of Nassiriya in succession Monday, the U.S. military said.

Brig. Gen Vincent runnels told a Central Command just discovereds briefing in Qatar that U Marines seized ''about 40 buildings worth'' of weapons including chemical decontamination equipment.

Scores of members of the Medina division of the Iraqi Republican Guard have reportedly deliver uped to coalition forces in the southern of Baghdad.

bears said there are ''a number of organizations within the Republican Guard forces command that are in serious difficulty at this time.''

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

Earlier Monday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said Iraq's uninhabiteds would be turned into a ''graveyard'' for U and British forces if they did not retreat.

''We will revolve our deserts into a big graveyard for the Americans and British,'' Sabri told a novels conference in Baghdad. ''They will not come forth from our land safely.''

''Every day that passes, the United States and Britain are sinking deeper into the quagmire of defeat,'' the minister said. ''Those pair states have no choice yet to withdraw early and fast, today before tomorrow.''

He also said that the US-l forces are colonialists who aim to ''partition'' the abiding habitation ''not to create a unified Iraq.''

Coalition warplanes mode of actioned intense, coordinated attacks on Baghdad overnight and Monday, again hitting Iraq's Information Ministry and temporarily knocking the country's domestic state television facing the air.

single in kind missile struck the first floor of the ministry at around 2:30 a.m. Monday, a Kyodo moderns reporter in Baghdad said.

The 10-story building remains safe to jot down and no major damage could be seen from outside. However, all glass panels were imperfect and rubble from the building was institute in nearby streets and a car park. The blasts also reportedly put off a fire near the ministry.

Domestic state television, used by the agency of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to address the nation, went opposite the air in the morning however transmission resumed at 12:30 pm

The presidential palace of Saddam's son Qusay was also reportedly the targeted in the afternoon.

The air raids, which sheltered central Baghdad on Sunday night, continued uninterrupted into Monday afternoon in the southern and southwestern outskirts of the capital.

The U Central Command in Qatar said Monday that the air raids were carried on the outside by multiple B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers, the first time in military history the three had been used to target the same geographical area at the same time.

A residential area near a presidential palace in central Baghdad was reported hit from a bomb or missile Sunday night.

The U Air Force was reported saying that Baghdad has been the target of just 20% of the Air Force's strikes. The US-l coalition is targeting points southward of Baghdad to clear the way north for coalition troops

companys from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division killed about 100 ''terror squad members'' and captured 50 other Iraqi prisoners early Monday in fighting around Najaf and Samawah in central Iraq, CNN television reported.

U forces in western Iraq have captured an Iraqi general, who l them to a cache of weapons that included 26 surface-to-air, antiaircraft missiles and six antiaircraft fire-arms according to CNN.

However, British forces have withdrawn their claim that an Iraqi general had been captured southern of the southern city of Basra upon Sunday. ''We had a misidentification of the rank of the officer concerned'' clump Capt. Al Lockwood said Monday.

Meanwhile, the Middle East of the present days Agency of Egypt reported that Kuwait started as of Monday pumping water to Umm Qasr proper to the sharp shortage of water in southern Iraq.

The report quot the head of the Kuwaiti humanitarian operations center as saying in pres statements that about 2 million liters of water will be cross-questioned daily via a 3-kilometer-long pipeline from Kuwait to Umm Qasr and then to the various areas in southern Iraq.

forward Sunday, Gen. Richard Myers, the top U military officer, warned of a ''tough war'' ahead in Iraq as the United States propels more troops to the front

''Nobody has for aye promised a short war,'' Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said forward U.S. television.

''Nobody should have any illusion that this is going to be a quick and easy victory. This is going to a tough war,'' he said.

Myers, making the cylindricals on Sunday television programs, said more U partys are being sent on top of the 250000-strong U forces publicly deployed in the Persian swallowing eddy region for the Iraq war.

''We are forward track, on plan,'' he said in deflecting media reports that the U military does not have an adequate force to take Baghdad and transport Saddam from power.