Puttumattalan, Sri Lanka ? Hundreds who fled intense fighting in Sri Lanka’s war zone were awaiting evacuation from this tiny coastal village as the U.N. reported that nearly 6,500 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed in the last three months.

Speaking to journalists on a rare visit to the edge of the war zone Friday, civilians told of Tamil Tiger rebels using them as human shields.

Conditions “were terrible as we did not have anything to eat. We thought it’s better to flee,” said Rajeshwarai, 40, who gave only her first name.

She and other civilians moved with the retreating rebels for months as the advancing army chipped away at the insurgents’ territory, trying to end the nation’s quarter-century of civil strife.

The rebels promised the civilians protection, Rajeshwarai said. “But they did not keep the promise.”

The U.N. estimates that 50,000 people were still trapped in the war zone after more than 100,000 fled earlier this week, spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said Friday. Nearly 1,000 awaited evacuation Friday.

The U.N.’s top humanitarian official, John Holmes, will leave Saturday on a three-day trip to Sri Lanka to look into the welfare of the refugees and seek the release of all U.N. staff detained in camps, U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said Friday.

Dr. Thangamuttu Sathyamurthi, a top government health official in the war zone, said there was a severe shortage of food and medicine in the area and people were dying of starvation.

The ongoing violence was so intense that many people were abandoning their dying relatives to flee the fighting, he said.

Doctors Without Borders, a medical relief group, said the civilians pouring out of the conflict zone included large numbers of people with blast, mine and gunshot wounds.

The rebels have denied accusations they used civilians as human shields.

At least 6,432 civilians have been killed in the intense fighting over the past three months and 13,946 wounded, according to a private U.N. document circulated among diplomatic missions in Sri Lanka in recent days. A foreign diplomat gave a copy to The Associated Press on Friday.

Civilian deaths have increased dramatically, according to the U.N. An average of 33 civilians were killed each day at the end of January, and that jumped to 116 by April, the document said.