Iraq's foreign minister confidently predicted Monday that Iraqi forces would defeat American and British forces and said only surrender would save coalition troops from the "holocaust" the Iraqi people are preparing for them. "Every day that passes the United States and Britain are sinking deeper in the mud of defeat. ... Those two states have no choice but to withdraw early and fast, today before tomorrow," Naji Sabri told reporters.

"We shall annihilate these forces and the only ones who will be spared are the ones who surrender on the battlefield," he said.

As he spoke in a news conference at the Iraqi Information Ministry in Baghdad, a building which was again hit in strikes early Monday, a new air raid was reported in the Iraqi capital.

With coalition invasion forces reportedly closing in on Baghdad, Sabri said the Americans and the British had already suffered hundreds of dead or wounded "while others were taken prisoners or fled." He refused to give a number for U.S. or British prisoners held by Iraq.

"We are determined to inflict the biggest possible number of losses among them and expel them outside our borders. Victory is near," Sabri said.

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Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said "not a single Iraqi city has been captured by US-British invasion troops during the four days of their thrust inside Iraq."(AFP/Dasski)