HEALTH officials said that Israeli forces fired on Palestinians as they headed toward an aid distribution site today, killing at least 27, in the third such incident in three days.

It was hours after three Israeli soldiers were killed in northern Gaza.

Israeli authorities said the latest aid distribution deaths came after it fired “near a few individual suspects” who left the designated route, approached its forces and ignored warning shots.

The Israeli military continues to deny opening fire on civilians or blocking them from reaching aid sites.

The daily shootings have come after an Israeli and United States-backed foundation established aid distribution points inside Israeli military zones, a system that it says is designed to circumvent Hamas.

The United Nations has condemned the new system, saying it doesn’t address Gaza’s mounting hunger crisis and allows Israel to use aid as a weapon.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates the aid sites, claims, despite the evidence, that there has been no violence in or around them.

Today 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.”

Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that 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.

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.

Yasser Abu Lubda, a displaced Palestinian from Rafah, said the shooting took place in the city’s Flag Roundabout area near the aid distribution hub. He said he saw several people killed or wounded.

Neima al-Aaraj, a woman from Khan Younis, gave a similar account.

“There were many martyrs and wounded,” she said, saying the shooting by Israeli forces was “indiscriminate.”

The Israeli military meanwhile said today that three of its soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip.

The military said that the three soldiers were killed during combat in northern Gaza on Monday. Israeli media reported that they were killed in an explosion in the Jabaliya area.

The soldiers’ deaths were announced hours after Hamas said on Monday that its fighters were engaging in “fierce clashes” with Israeli forces in the north of the territory.