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

U.S. and British warplanes continued to strike targets in and around Baghdad on Monday, hitting Iraqi troop positions and the Karada Intelligence Complex believed to be the headquarters of the Fedayeen Saddam, the paramilitary group known for its guerrilla tactics. 

U.S. warplanes struck targets in northern Iraq about 5:30 p.m. Monday (9:30 a.m. EST), hitting a ridge where Iraqi troops have been entrenched. A pair of U.S. F-14 Tomcats struck the ridge, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Mosul. The area was the target of heavy bombing Sunday. 

Meanwhile, the going is slow for coalition forces trying to chip away at Iraqi resistance in the southern region and working to win "the hearts and minds" of the civilian population, British military spokesman Col. Chris Vernon said Monday. 

"Any military person will tell you that fighting in built-up areas as we are seeing in Basra is difficult and it's slow," Vernon told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. 

Calling it symptomatic of a dying regime, a British military official accused Iraqi militia of "indiscriminately" firing mortars "against their own civilians" in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. 

"It's just a terror tactic," said British Group Capt. Al Lockwood. "There's obviously no determined targeting." (Full story) 

Meanwhile, troops 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 southern Iraq, Central Command said. 

Republican Guard fighters holed up in Hilla, apparently trying to bait U.S. forces into urban combat, according to CNN's Walter Rodgers, who is embedded with the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry of the 3rd Infantry Division. (Iraqis press for urban warfare) 

U.S. troops and Iraqi soldiers on the city outskirts have exchanged artillery fire, but U.S. forces are not targeting surface-to-air missile sites inside the city, citing the risk of civilian casualties. Navy F-14 Tomcats and Air Force F-15s roared overhead late Sunday and early Monday, Rodgers said. 

Contradicting coalition reports, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri painted a different picture of the conflict Monday, saying the U.S.-led coalition is being "defeated on all fronts and [is] retreating in the face of strong strikes." 

"If they continue to be stubborn with their aggression, we will attack them with all they have," Sabri said. "No one will be safe except for those who surrender to us on the battlefield."

Other developments
• U.S. Marines staged early raids Monday in southern Iraq looking for Iraqi Gen. Ali Hassan al Majeed, Saddam Hussein's cousin, a military source said. Al Majeed, commander of Iraqi forces in the south, is widely known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering the use of chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds in 1988. (Full story) 

• An International Committee of the Red Cross team interviewed about 100 captured Iraqi troops Monday at an undisclosed location in southern Iraq, the agency said, the first such meeting since the war began. Red Cross workers plan to hold more meetings later this week with Iraqi prisoners of war. U.S-led forces are holding about 3,000 Iraqi POWs, the agency said. 

• U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will travel this week to Turkey and NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, a State Department official said. Powell will seek to mend relations with the Turkish government, which were strained when its parliament voted against allowing U.S. troops to launch an invasion of Iraq from Turkish soil. Turkish officials have told their U.S. counterparts that their forces do not plan to enter northern Iraq -- a move American officials strongly oppose -- a U.S. diplomat said. 

• Hundreds of Iraqis have flooded the U.N. refugee agency's office in Damascus, Syria, asking for "temporary protection status," the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement. The document the Iraqis seek would prevent them from being forced to return to Iraq until the country is safe. 

• Iraqi forces Monday tried to push women and children onto a bridge between Hilla and Karbala that the forces had rigged with explosives, shooting a woman who tried to escape, Brooks said at Central Command. Coalition officials have accused the Iraqi regime of using civilians as human shields, a tactic Iraq denies. 

• Iraqi TV showed a video of Saddam and his two sons Monday, footage the state-run network said was new. U.S. officials said they have not determined whether Saddam survived or was injured by early coalition airstrikes. 

• About 1,000 Iraqi soldiers have surrendered to Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq, Kurdish officials said. 

• An Iraqi official said Iraqi troops destroyed more than a dozen tanks and armored vehicles, shot down four Apache helicopter gunships and killed 43 U.S. and British "mercenaries" in fighting in southern Iraq. CNN could not verify these claims. 

• Clean water began flowing Monday from Kuwait to the southern Iraqi port city of Umm Qasr through a pipeline that will provide some 600,000 gallons of fresh water a day, Brooks said. Iraqi forces had cut off water supplies to the city. 

• NBC announced Monday that both it and National Geographic have severed their ties with Peter Arnett. The longtime war correspondent told state-run Iraqi television the U.S.-led coalition's initial war plan "failed" because of strong Iraqi resistance. Arnett had been reporting from Baghdad for NBC News and MSNBC while on assignment for National Geographic Explorer. He apologized for his comments Monday on the "Today" show.

• The U.S.-led aerial bombardment has depleted one-third of the U.S. Navy's Tomahawk missile inventory, CNN has learned. About 700 missiles have been fired, U.S. officials said, out of about 2,000 Tomahawks that were ready for use. 

• President Bush travels Monday to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to pay tribute to the U.S. Coast Guard, a military branch doing double duty by contributing to homeland security and participating in the war with Iraq. (Full story) 

• U.S. Navy cruise missile ships positioned in the Red Sea are being moved to the Persian Gulf, U.S. military officials said. Saudi officials had requested the move and denied U.S. permission to fly missiles over its airspace after a small number of missiles crashed in its territory. 

• Coalition forces struck a gathering of paramilitary forces Sunday that had been taking shelter at an unused prison in the western Iraqi town of Ar Rutbah, the Combined Forces Air Component Command Public Affairs reported Monday.