There were often far less people around in areas where most of the fighting was, and also a lot less of it was in populated areas. The war in North Africa between the British and the Germans/Italians in Libya and Egypt was characterised by the back-and-forth movement of the Afrika Korps and Italian Forces and the British 8th Army. Initially, the Italians pushed the British back, then Operation Crusader pushed the Italians back, and then there was another counter attack and so on. Fast retreats meant that there was much less house-to-house fighting and the like in towns and cities, and the armies purely rolled through.

However there are records of civilian causalities, as there would be in any theatre of war. For example, in his book 'The Second World War' Antony Beevor states how American soldiers 'opened fire with Thompson sub-machine guns' when they saw local Tunisians looting the dead. He also talks about how Rommel's forces were 'cheered by the surviving inhabitants [of Gafsa], after the Americans has destroyed much of the town when blowing up their ammunition dump.'

These examples demonstrate that there were certainly civilian casulaties, as there would be in any theatre in WW2, however substantial casulaties were less likely and common because of the nature of the battlefields; there were less civilians and they were either spread out across the huge desert or in towns that were mostly bypassed by swift advances.