RAMALLAH/GENEVA: 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 Zionist 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 Zionist-Hamas war, some of them while fleeing from the north of the Gaza Strip southwards. According to the two organizations, 54 Palestinian detainees have died in Zionist prisons since the start of the war in Gaza. 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 Zionist jails and their families. The two organizations 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 the Zionist entity’s Soroka Hospital on Sunday, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said.

In a joint statement, the two organizations accused the Zionist entity of “liquidation operations against prisoners and detainees”. They said the number of prisoners killed in Zionist 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 the Zionist entity began occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Currently, more than 10,000 Palestinians are being held in Zionist jails, including 89 women, at least 345 children and 3,428 administrative detainees who are held without trial.

Meanwhile, the WHO chief called Monday for the immediate release of Hossam Abu Safiyeh, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, who is being held by the Zionist military following a major raid on the facility. The Friday-Saturday assault on Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahia left northern Gaza’s last major health facility out of service and emptied of patients, the World Health Organization said.

“Hospitals in Gaza have once again become battlegrounds and the health system is under severe threat,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X. “Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is out of service following the raid, forced patient and staff evacuation and the detention of its director. His whereabouts are unknown. We call for his immediate release.”

The Zionist military claimed on Sunday that its forces had killed approximately 20 Palestinians and apprehended 240 others in the raid, calling it one of its “largest operations” conducted in the territory. The military also said had detained Abu Safiyeh, suspecting him of being a Hamas militant.

Tedros, who last week was caught up in a Zionist strike against Yemen’s main airport that he said might have cost him his life, said the patients in critical condition at Kamal Adwan had been moved to the Indonesian Hospital, “which is itself out of function”. “Amid ongoing chaos in northern Gaza, WHO and partners today delivered basic medical and hygiene supplies, food and water to Indonesian Hospital and transferred 10 critical patients to Al-Shifa Hospital,” he said. “We urge (the Zionist entity) to ensure their health care needs and rights are upheld.”

He said seven patients along with 15 caregivers and health workers remained at the “severely damaged” Indonesian Hospital, “which has no ability to provide care”. “Al-Ahli Hospital and Al-Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital in Gaza City also faced attacks today and both are damaged,” Tedros added. “We repeat: stop attacks on hospitals. People in Gaza need access to health care. Humanitarians need access to provide health aid. Ceasefire!” At least 45,514 Palestinians have been killed and 108,189 wounded in the Zionist military offensive in Gaza. – Agencies