News / Palestine

All Palestinian inmates on hunger strike after death of fellow inmate

Sunday, 25 September 2016 8:10 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 25 September 2016 11:28 AM ]

Late Palestinian prisoner Yasser Dhiab Hamdouna (file photo)

All Palestinian inmates held in Israeli prisons have staged a three-day hunger strike following the death in custody of a fellow inmate at an Israeli detention center.

The Palestinians staged the strike after news emerged of the death of 40-year-old Yasser Dhiab Hamdouna, who died of a stroke reportedly after a failure by prison officials to provide him with necessary medical care.

The 40-year-old Hamdouna, a resident of the occupied northern West Bank city of Jenin, suffered a stroke on Sunday morning and was pronounced dead upon arrival at a medical center in the city of Beersheba, Arabic-language Safa news agency reported.

Palestinian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Hamdouna was being held captive in Ramon Prison, and was serving life imprisonment.

He had been suffering from recurrent shortness of breath, heart problems as well as agonizing pains in his left ear.

The sources said Hamdouna’s condition further deteriorated in the wake of Israeli prison authorities’ delay in providing treatment for him.

Even though the late Palestinian inmate had been transferred to the prison infirmary several times, Israeli doctors and medical staff had reportedly failed to provide due medical care.

Human rights groups say at least 207 Palestinians have lost their lives in Israeli prisons and detention centers, of whom 55 died as result of medical negligence.

They say the Tel Aviv regime is resorting to the policy of medical negligence in a bid to torment Palestinian prisoners both physically and psychologically and complicate their medical problems even after release.

Some 1,800 ill Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli jails, and 120 of them are in critical conditions, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).

More than 7,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in some 17 Israeli jails, many of them arbitrarily.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to voice outrage at their imprisonment without trial or charge as well as their prison conditions.

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