JERUSALEM: Palestinian groups fired salvoes of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel on Tuesday after a leader died in custody following an 87-day hunger strike, the first such death in more than three decades.
Khader Adnan, who was awaiting trial, was found unconscious in his cell and taken to a hospital, where he was declared dead after efforts to revive him, Israel’s Prisons
Service said.
Hundreds of people took to the streets in Gaza to rally in support of Adnan and mourn his death, and two separate rocket barrages were launched against Israel, claimed by an umbrella group including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The Israeli military said at least three rockets were fired from Gaza in the hours after Adnan’s death and a further 22 were launched later in the afternoon. Four were intercepted by Israeli air defence systems and the rest fell in open ground. Since 2011, Adnan had conducted at least three hunger strikes in protest at detentions without charges by Israel. The tactic has been used by other Palestinian prisoners, sometimes en masse, but none had died
since 1992.
Disputing the Prisons Service account, Adnan’s lawyer Jamil al Khatib and a doctor with a human rights group who recently met him accused Israeli authorities of withholding medical care.
“We demanded he be moved into a civilian hospital where he could be properly followed up (on). Unfortunately, such a demand was met by intransigence and rejection,” Al Khatib said.
Adnan, 45, was from Jenin in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Islamic Jihad sources said he was one of its political leaders.
Lina Qasem Hassan of Physicians for Human Rights in Israel said she saw Adnan on April 23, at which point he had lost 40 kg and was having trouble breathing but was conscious.
“His death could have been avoided,” Lina said, saying
several Israeli hospitals had refused to admit Adnan after he made brief visits to their emergency rooms.
The barrages came almost a month after cross-border exchanges of fire between Israel and Gaza, which followed an Israeli police raid in the Al Aqsa mosque complex during the holy month of Ramadhan. — Reuters
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