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Is­raeli forces fired on peo­ple as they head­ed to­ward an aid dis­tri­b­u­tion site in Gaza on Tues­day, killing at least 27, Pales­tin­ian health of­fi­cials and wit­ness­es said, 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 oc­curred 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 “fired to dri­ve away sus­pects.” In a state­ment, army spokesper­son Effie De­frin said “the num­bers of ca­su­al­ties pub­lished by Hamas were ex­ag­ger­at­ed” but that the in­ci­dent was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed. He said the army is not pre­vent­ing Pales­tini­ans in Gaza from reach­ing aid in the dis­tri­b­u­tion ar­eas, but rather al­low­ing it.