CIVILIANS IN MARJA GIVEN SIMILAR ADVICE AS THOSE IN FALLUJAH

Marja, Afghanistan, Feb 2010
"... Few civilians have managed to escape the Afghan town of Marjah ahead of a planned US/NATO assault... about 95% of the locals are Taliban or aid the militants... military helicopters dropped leaflets over Marjah as radio broadcasts "warned residents not to shelter Taliban ahead of a massive assault." Doesn't this suggest that the invading U.S. forces may regard any civilian alleged to be "sheltering Taliban" as a legitimate target, including women and children? If the U.S. assault in Marjah results in large scale civilian casualties, the U.S. will have committed a major war crime..."
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/12-6

Fallujah, Iraq, Nov 2004

"... a shattered landscape of gutted buildings, crushed cars and charred bodies.... utter destruction, with concrete houses flattened, mosques in ruins, telegraph poles down, power and phone lines hanging slack and rubble and human remains littering the empty streets... rotting corpses being piled up and thousands still trapped inside their homes, many of them wounded and without access to food, water or medical aid... The US Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed last week that Iraqi civilians had been warned how to avoid injury. "Innocent civilians in that city have all the guidance they need as to how they can avoid getting into trouble. There aren't going to be large numbers of civilians killed and certainly not by US forces...”
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=582915

"... a high-ranking official with the Red Cross in Baghdad told IPS that ”at least 800 civilians” have been killed in Fallujah so far... His estimate is based on reports from Red Crescent aid workers stationed around the embattled city, from residents within the city and from refugees... The official estimated that at least 50,000 residents remain trapped within the city. They were too poor to leave, lacked friends or family outside the city and therefore had nowhere to go, or they simply had not had enough time to escape before the siege began."
>http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1116-04.htm