Bash script: Get XML elements into array using xmllint

This is a follow up question to this post.

I want to end up with an array, containing all the <description> elements of the xml.

array[0] = "<![CDATA[A title for .... <br />]]>"
array[1] = "<![CDATA[A title for .... <br />]]>"

...

file.xml:

<item>
    <description><![CDATA[A title for the URLs<br /><br />

    http://www.foobar.com/foo/bar
    <br />http://bar.com/foo
    <br />http://myurl.com/foo
    <br />http://desiredURL.com/files/ddd
    <br />http://asdasd.com/onefile/g.html
    <br />http://second.com/link
    <br />]]></description> 


</item>
    </item>
<description> ...</description>
    <item>