By MOHAMMAD JAHJOUH, SAMY MAGDY and FATMA KHALED

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinian health officials and witnesses say Israeli forces fired on people as they headed toward an aid distribution site on Tuesday, killing at least 27, in the third such shooting in three days. The army said it fired “near a few individual suspects” who left the designated route, approached its forces and ignored warning shots.

The near-daily shootings have come after an Israeli and U.S.-backed foundation established aid distribution points inside Israeli military zones, a system it says is designed to circumvent Hamas. The United Nations has rejected the new system, saying it doesn’t address Gaza’s mounting hunger crisis and allows Israel to use aid as a weapon.

The Israeli military said it was looking into reports of casualties on Tuesday. It previously said it fired warning shots at suspects who approached its forces early Sunday and Monday, when health officials and witnesses said that 34 people were killed. The military denies opening fire on civilians or blocking them from reaching the aid sites.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates the sites, says there has been no violence in or around them. On Tuesday, it acknowledged that the Israeli military was investigating whether civilians were wounded “after moving beyond the designated safe corridor and into a closed military zone,” in an area that was “well beyond our secure distribution site.”

A spokesperson for the group said that it was “saddened to learn that a number of civilians were injured and killed after moving beyond the designated safe corridor”.

‘Either way we will die’

The shootings all occurred at the Flag Roundabout, around a half-mile from one of the GHF’s distribution sites in the now mostly uninhabited southern city of Rafah. The entire area is an Israeli military zone where journalists have no access outside of army-approved embeds.

Yasser Abu Lubda, a 50-year-old displaced from Rafah, said that the shooting started around 4 a.m. on Tuesday and that he saw several people killed or wounded.

Neima al-Aaraj, a woman from Khan Younis, said that the Israeli fire was “indiscriminate.” She added that when she managed to reach the distribution site, there was no aid left.

“After the martyrs and wounded, I won’t return,” she said. “Either way we will die.”

Rasha al-Nahal, another witness, said that “there was gunfire from all directions.” She said that she counted more than a dozen dead and several wounded along the road.

When she reached the distribution site, she also found that there was no aid left, she said. So she gathered pasta from the ground and salvaged rice from a bag that had been dropped and trampled upon.

“We’d rather die than deal with this,” she said. “Death is more dignified than what’s happening to us.”

UN human rights official condemns shootings

At least 27 people were killed early Tuesday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, confirmed the toll, saying its field hospital in Rafah received 184 wounded people, 19 of whom were declared dead on arrival and eight more who later died of their wounds. The 27 dead were transferred to Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis.

Jeremy Laurence, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva that it also had information indicating that 27 people were killed.

There were three children and two women among the dead, according to Mohammed Saqr, head of nursing at Nasser Hospital. Hospital director Atef al-Hout said that most of the patients had gunshot wounds.

An Associated Press reporter who arrived at the Red Cross field hospital at around 6 a.m. saw wounded people being transferred to other hospitals by ambulance.

Outside, people were passing by on their way back from the aid hub, mostly empty-handed, while empty flour bags stained with blood lay on the ground.

“Palestinians have been presented the grimmest of choices: die from starvation or risk being killed while trying to access the meager food that is being made available through Israel’s militarized humanitarian assistance mechanism,” Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said that it distributed 21 truckloads of food at the Rafah site on Tuesday, while its other two operational sites were closed.

During a ceasefire earlier this year, around 600 aid trucks entered Gaza daily. The territory’s roughly 2 million people are almost completely reliant on international aid because Israel’s offensive has destroyed nearly all of Gaza’s food production capabilities.

3 Israeli soldiers killed in northern Gaza

The Israeli military, meanwhile, said that three of its soldiers were killed in northern Gaza, in what appeared to be the deadliest attack on Israel’s forces since it ended a ceasefire with Hamas in March.

The military said the three soldiers, all in their early 20s, died during combat on Monday, without providing details. Israeli media reported that they were killed in an explosion in the Jabaliya area.

Israel ended the ceasefire after Hamas refused to change the agreement to release more hostages sooner. Israeli strikes have killed thousands of Palestinians since then, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israel also imposed a complete blockade on food and other imports for 2½ months, leading to warnings of famine before the restrictions were loosened in May.

Israel says the restrictions and the new system are designed to prevent Hamas from stealing aid. The U.N. says its ability to deliver aid across Gaza has been hindered by Israeli restrictions, the breakdown of law and order and widespread looting, but that there’s no evidence of systematic diversion of aid by Hamas.

Hamas-led terrorists killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 people hostage in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack into southern Israel that ignited the war. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, and European Union.

They are still holding 58 hostages, a third of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.

Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants. The ministry is led by medical professionals but reports to the Hamas-run government. Its toll is seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts, though Israel has challenged its numbers.

Israel says it has killed around 20,000 combatants, without providing evidence. Around 860 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the Oct. 7 attack, including more than 400 during the fighting inside Gaza.

Magdy and Khaled reported from Cairo. Julia Frankel and Areej Hazboun in Jerusalem, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva, contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war