The military said Tuesday that troops fired warning shots at Palestinians who approached them near a US- and Israeli-backed aid distribution site in Gaza hours before it opened, while separately, it shot down a rocket fired from the northern part of the Strip at Israel.

Soldiers fired the warning shots at Palestinians who approached them, posing a threa, in the Netzarim Corridor area near the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) facility, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The military said the Palestinians approached the troops “despite warnings that the area is an active combat zone.”

Palestinian media reported that some 20 people were killed and dozens were wounded in the incident — a toll that cannot be verified.

The reports said the people were waiting to pick up supplies at the site.

Medics said the casualties were rushed to two hospitals — the Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, and the Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, in the north.

The military said it was aware of the reports of casualties caused by its gunfire in the area, but “the reported number of casualties is inconsistent with the information available to the IDF.”

The IDF said it was further investigating the incident.

Last week, it warned Palestinians not to approach routes leading to Gaza Humanitarian Fund sites between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. local time, describing these roads as closed military zones.

There was no immediate GHF comment on Tuesday’s incident.

Additionally, it was unclear how many of its sites had opened.

“I went there at 2 a.m., hoping to get some food. On my way there, I saw people returning emptyhanded. They said aid packages have run out in five minutes. This is insane and isn’t enough,” said Mohammad Abu Amr, 40, a father of two.

“Dozens of thousands arrive from the central areas and from the northern areas too, some of them walked for over 20 km (12 miles), only to come back home with disappointment,” he told Reuters via a chat app. He said he heard the firing but didn’t see what happened.

The Israel- and US-backed GHF has faced heavy scrutiny from other aid bodies, as well as the UN and foreign countries, which say that it does not sufficiently address the humanitarian needs in the war-torn Palestinian enclave.

Critics have also accused GHF of putting aid seekers in harm’s way, with operations beset by deadly incidents for multiple days in a row.

Hamas authorities claimed at least 10 people were killed after the GHF closed one of its Tel Sultan centers due to the “chaos of the crowds” on Monday.

Witnesses blamed IDF troops and the Abu Shabab group, which defense sources confirmed on Thursday that Israel was arming. The militia has been linked in the past to smuggling operations with Egyptian jihadist groups.

Also called the Popular Forces, the group says it is guarding the environs of the GHF centers in southern Gaza. Aid workers say it has a long history of looting UN aid trucks. GHF has said it does not work with the Abu Shabab group.

Though the UN has continued to distribute aid in the Strip while GHF finds its footing, it has complained that it has been unable to deliver much of its humanitarian supplies due to IDF restrictions on movements and because roads that the military designates for its trucks to use are unsafe and vulnerable to looters.

Israel and the United States accuse Hamas of stealing aid, while the UN denies there is any systematic diversion away from civilians. The UN says the new system is unable to meet mounting needs and allows Israel to use aid as a weapon by determining who can receive it and by forcing people to relocate to where the aid sites are positioned.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, a rocket launched from northern Gaza was intercepted by air defenses, the military said.

Sirens had sounded at Zikim Beach.

Following the rocket fire, the IDF issued an additional evacuation warning for the area of the launch — an area that is already under an existing order issued by the military in late May.

“The IDF is operating with great force in the areas where you are located to destroy the capabilities of terror organizations. The IDF will respond firmly to every terror act or rocket attack,” the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Col. Avichay Adraee said on X.

Civilians were called to head for “known shelters” in Gaza City.

IDF troops demolished over 1,200 “terror infrastructures” in the Khan Younis suburb of Khuzaʽa during a recent operation in the area, as part of efforts to expand Israel’s buffer zone along the border with the Gaza Strip, the military said Tuesday.

The operation in Khuzaʽa in recent weeks was led by the 188th Armored Brigade.

“The forces worked to locate and destroy terror infrastructure in the [Khuzaʽa] area, which served as a central Hamas terror stronghold,” the IDF said.

Hundreds of Hamas terrorists set out from Khuzaʽa during the October 7, 2023, onslaught, especially to Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Nir Oz was one of the worst-hit communities during Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught. In all, 47 people were killed in the kibbutz and another 76 were abducted by the terrorists to Gaza.

During combat engineering operations and airstrikes, the IDF said it killed dozens of terror operatives and destroyed 1,200 sites, both above and below ground, to “remove the threat to the border communities.”

Among the destroyed infrastructures was a tunnel that was 500 meters long and 25 meters deep, the military added.

Additionally, the Al-Amal Hospital in Gaza is now “virtually out of service” due to intense military activity, the head of the WHO said Monday.

“Access to the hospital is obstructed, preventing new patients from reaching care, and leading to more preventable deaths,” the World Health Organization’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X.

Tedros said two emergency medical teams — one local, the other international — “are still doing their best to serve the remaining patients with the limited medical supplies left on the premises.”

“With the closure of Al-Amal, Nasser Medical Complex is now the only remaining hospital with an intensive care unit in Khan Younis,” he said.

The WHO said June 5 that al-Nasser and Al-Amal hospitals were unable to fully treat the wounded that continue to pour in because of serious shortages of medicines and medical supplies after the now-ended total blockade.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry says more than 54,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7, 2023, onslaught.

Israel launched its war in Gaza following the Hamas assault on southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people and saw another 251 taken hostage. Terror groups in Gaza continue to hold 55 hostages, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF, and 20 who are believed to be alive. There are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 429.