Israeli officers and soldiers have told a newspaper that they were instructed to shoot at unarmed Palestinians seeking aid at designated distribution zones in Gaza, despite the crowds posing no threat, Al Jazeera reports, citing Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Haaretz reported that it had learned that the military prosecutor’s office has demanded that the military’s supreme command launch an investigation of suspected war crimes at the aid hubs.

In the report, the soldiers described how the Israeli military fired on crowds of aid seekers to prevent them from approaching or disperse them, rather than using non-lethal crowd control measures.

“It’s a killing field… where I was, between one and five people were killed every day,” one soldier said.

“They fire on them as if they were an attacking force: they don’t use riot control devices, they don’t shoot tear gas, they shoot everything you can think of — a heavy machine gun, a grenade launcher, mortars.

He added: “We communicate with them through fire.”