Five Gazans die in Israeli custody: Palestinian Authority

The Palestinian Authority's Ministry for detainees and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club announced on Monday that they had received reports of the deaths of five Gazans in Israeli detention.

Amani Sarahna, a spokesperson for the Prisoners' Club, confirmed to AFP that two of the five died on Sunday, while the remaining three died earlier.

The club said the five prisoners were arrested during the Israel-Hamas war, some of them while fleeing from the north of the Gaza Strip southwards.

According to the two organisations, 54 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli prisons since the start of the war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Thirty-five of the dead have been from the Gaza Strip, with the rest from the occupied West Bank.

The detainees ministry is an arm of the Palestinian Authority responsible for the welfare of Palestinians in Israeli jails and their families.

The two organisations named four of the dead prisoners as Mohammad Rashid Okka, 44, Samir Mahmoud al-Kahlout, 52, Zuhair Omar al-Sharif, 58, and Mohammad Anwar Labad, 57.

An additional prisoner, Ashraf Mohammad Abu Warda, 51, died in Israel's Soroka Hospital on Sunday, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club said.

They did not provide details of how the prisoners died.

In a joint statement, the two organisations accused Israel of "liquidation operations against prisoners and detainees".

They said the number of prisoners killed in Israeli jails was at a historic high, calling it "the most bloody phase". According to the statement, 291 Palestinian prisoners have died in custody since 1967, when Israel began occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Currently, more than 10,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails, including 89 women, at least 345 children and 3,428 administrative detainees who are held without trial.

The Israel Prisons Service did not immediately respond to an AFP request for confirmation of the deaths.