About 40 families managed to flee in the past 36 hours, one of them saying they hid in a drainage pipe.
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The UN estimates that 10 million people in Iraq need some form of humanitarian assistance, including 3.4 million people who have been displaced since January 2014.
Coalition forces at al-Taqqaddum Air Base, about 25 kilometers away, are also providing some artillery fire to help Iraqis battling to retake the city. Some have died as they tried to escape, according to observers on the ground. It said residents face acute shortages of food and medicine.
Falluja, which lies about 50 kilometers (32 miles) west of Baghdad, is a bastion of the insurgency that fought the USA occupation of Iraq and the Shi’ite-led authorities that replaced former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, a Sunni.
NRC said only 249 families (around 1,500 people) they knew of had managed to flee the Fallujah area since the launch of military operations almost a week ago.
The families I met were in a state of shock and spoke about the ordeal of their escape. People trapped in the city centre are thought to be most at risk and unable to flee.
Fallujah is one of IS’s most important bastions. They removed their shoes and sandals so they were not heard as they started running. Residents were instructed to wave white flags over their houses if they were trapped. Dozens were injured and three killed during clashes with security forces firing tear gas and warning shots.
IS has recently been losing large parts of the territory straddling Syria and Iraq over which it proclaimed a “caliphate” with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as its head two years ago.
Iraqi forces in February blocked supply routes between the two cities in an attempt to hinder ISIS operations.
Sheikh al-Jumaili, a member of Fallujah’s tribal council, told Al Jazeera that Shia militias were torching mosques and homes in al-Karmah, a town some 16km northeast of Fallujah that was captured by Iraqi armed forces on Friday.
In a press briefing in Geneva, Melissa Fleming, chief spokesperson for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that there have been reports of a dramatic increase in the number of executions of men and older boys in Fallujah refusing to fight on behalf of extremists.
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Coalition officials estimated earlier this week that 500-700 ISIL fighters remain in the city, according to a United States military estimate, hiding amongst the civilian population.
