According to a Buzzfeed report, the escalating violence in Gaza has thwarted any attempts to relocate hundreds of US nationals out of the city. As the violence between Israel and Palestine enters into the seventh day, the Ministry of Health has said that over 174 people had been killed in the last week and a third of them are children. Despite regional sides and western countries, including the US, has called for a ceasefire, the top leadership of Israel and Hamas officials has refused to halt military offensive plans and confirmed that the fighting could continue from days or weeks.
Eman Mohammed, who is a US green card carrying resident and a TED fellow who has been working in the city as a freelance photographer, spoke to Buzzfeed over the phone, "Do you know how hard it is to get anywhere in Gaza right now? And I have two young children with me. I tried hard to get there, but there was no way. So now I am stuck here in Gaza City. I'm so worried, mostly for my children. This isn't easy for anyone, to be stuck here."
Mohammed also told the viral news site that she has resorted to using her fellowship credentials in order to speed up the process of evacuation.
"I wrote the U.S. Embassy and they told me they couldn't help. They said they couldn't interfere to get me out. For more than a week they asked me the same details over and over again - information from my passport and my daughters' passports that I had already given them," she said.
Another US national also told Buzzfeed that evacuation instructions were confusing and has been sent out at the last minute, which did not help mothers who have children with them to navigate the bomb-ridden streets in the city. Fatima Attab, who has been visiting her extended family in Gaza until the offensives has started, said, "We asked to be evacuated, we asked for help, but from where we live, it was impossible to get to Gaza City at 6 AM. I feel so afraid. And the children are crying. I told them we would leave this morning and now they keep asking me, ‘Why are we still here, Mommy?'"
US Consulate press attaché Leslie Ordeman confirmed that approximately 150 people with US citizenship have been evacuated from the city on Sunday, and that the US government is still in talks to Egypt about opening its Rafah crossing with Gaza in order to facilitate US nationals' exit from the border.
However, there seemed to have been a change of tune with the US Consulate regarding evacuation plans. The US Consulate said that they are working on the matter, but have yet to provide evacuation instructions about families wishing to leave the city.
