“Do you know how hard it is to get anywhere in Gaza right now? And I have two young children with me,” said Mohammed, a Palestinian-American national who spoke to BuzzFeed by phone. “I tried hard to get there, but there was no way. So now I am stuck here in Gaza City.”

Mohammed is one of several hundred Palestinians with dual American citizenship who remained in Gaza Sunday night, unable to leave as fighting there entered its seventh day. The Ministry of Health in Gaza said that more than 174 people have been killed in the last week, as many as one-third of them children. While regional and western officials, including those from the U.S., have pressed both sides to agree to a cease-fire, Israel’s top leadership and Hamas officials abroad have said that the recent round of fighting could continue for days, or weeks to come.

“I’m so worried, mostly for my children,” said Mohammed, who has been working as a freelance photographer in Gaza for years, and who recently became a TED fellow. “This isn’t easy for anyone, to be stuck here.”