GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center)Palestinian human rights organizations have announced the martyrdom of three detainees from Gaza following official confirmations received from the Israeli occupation authorities.
In a joint statement on Thursday, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, and Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association confirmed the martyrdom of Ayman Abdul Hadi Qdeih, 56, Bilal Talal Salama, 24, and Mohammed Ismail Al-Astal, 46.
Ayman Qdeih was arrested on 7 October 2023 and martyred just a few days later, on 12 October 2023.
Bilal Salama was detained in March 2024 while fleeing Khan Yunis and martyred on 11 August 2024.
Mohammed Al-Astal was arrested on 7 February 2024 and martyred on 2 May 2025.
These deaths raise the number of confirmed detainee martyrs since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza to 69, of whom 44 are from Gaza. Since 1967, a total of 306 prisoners have died in Israeli custody, according to verified records.
The organizations noted that many more detainees from Gaza are believed to have been martyred in custody, but their identities are being deliberately withheld by Israeli authorities. This current period, they stated, represents the bloodiest chapter in the history of the Palestinian prisoner movement.
They added that the deaths of the three detainees are part of the systematic violence and brutality of the Israeli prison system, which has long employed organized methods of torture, starvation, and medical neglect to kill prisoners, amounting to another form of ongoing genocide.
The organizations further highlighted that detainees from Gaza have faced some of the most severe forms of abuse, including physical torture, starvation, medical negligence, and sexual violence. Testimonies from Gaza detainees over the past several months have revealed extreme and continuous violations, often involving compounded abuse.
They also criticized the Israeli military for providing only minimal and delayed information regarding the circumstances of death, often limited to the date of death without any details. In some cases, authorities deliberately issued conflicting information, prompting legal efforts by rights organizations to obtain conclusive responses from Israeli courts.
The organizations warned that thousands of detainees held in Israeli prisons and military camps are being subjected to slow and systematic death through calculated neglect, denial of basic needs, and deliberate spread of disease.
They emphasized that the main causes behind the rising number of prisoner deaths are torture, medical crimes, and intentional starvation. The continuation of these practices will inevitably lead to more deaths. Time has become a decisive factor in the fate of these detainees as violations persist.
Finally, the organizations renewed their call for the international human rights community to open an independent, international investigation into the deaths of detainees since the start of the genocide and to take concrete measures to hold Israeli leaders accountable for ongoing war crimes against the Palestinian people.
As of early May 2025, the number of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons exceeded 10,100, including 37 women, over 400 children, 3,577 administrative detainees, and 1,846 detainees from Gaza classified by Israel as “unlawful combatants”—a figure that does not include all detainees held in military camps, particularly those from Gaza.
