I'm not following this: "get out, and by the way, if you're under 45 we'll arrest you"? Either we're sending conflicting messages or the author of this piece isn't describing the situation correctly.
Woman, children and the old. The rest will die.
They are trying to let the women, kids and old folks out.
Glomming onto men of fighting age.
I noticed that. I think the problem is that it is impossible to distinguish "civilians" from insurgents. It seems that the age cut-off is the only way to separate the wheat from the chaffe, so to speak.
Translation to males under 45: Surrender or die.
Makes perfect sense to me.
The women, children and elderly aren't the terrorists pretending to be civilians
Men under 45 will be rounded up and shorted out later who are the good guys and who are the bad guys
Whoever is arrested has a better chance of living then staying in that place
I had the same reaction. Reminds me of the old roman practice of killing all the men, and selling the women and kids into slavery. But I guess it's the only way to catch the enemy.
You can try to reduce collateral damage by allowing the very young, the old and inferm and females to leave, but to let young(er) men leave would be to allow people who'll almost certainly attack you elsewhere in Iraq another day.
They don't want the insurgents to slip out with the general population and regroup elsewhere.
I believe by emptying the rebelious city, the coalition will be able to seize any armaments coming out (or in). After that, it's a mop-up operation to clear out remaining elements of terrorists.