Hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner Al-Qeeq vomiting blood

The health of imprisoned Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leader, Ahmad Saadat, and prisoners Ahed Ghalmeh and Muhammad Al-Qeeq have seriously deteriorated, with all three vomiting blood, the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs revealed in a statement yesterday.

The three are being held in Israel’s Ohalei Kedar prison, where the media committee of the hunger strike has quoted prisoners as saying the conditions in which the hunger strikers were being held were increasingly unhygienic, in an effort to break their will.

A hunger-striking prisoner told the committee on Wednesday that prisoners had been given worn out and dirty covers, that their cells were infected with bugs and that hunger strikers who had been transferred to Ohalei Kedar after 16 May had not been allowed to change clothes or underwear.

Read: 76 Palestinian hunger strikers sent to Israeli hospitals

Qaraqe said the prisoners had raised their initial demands to being acknowledged as prisoners of war, and to be transferred to prisons inside the occupied Palestinian territory, as Israel continues to refuse to respond to their demands for basic rights.

In a statement released on Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said:

From a medical perspective we are entering a critical phase [and] we are concerned about potentially irreversible health consequences.