An elderly man from Gaza has died in Israeli detention, bringing the overall death toll of Palestinian prisoners to at least 71 since 7 October 2023.
Though the Israeli army had notified two Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club and the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, of his death in recent days, 70-year-old Hussein Abu Habel actually died on 10 January.
Forty-five of the 71 Palestinians known to have died in Israeli-run detention centres and prisons since the start of the war on Gaza were from Gaza and their identities were known.
In what has been described by the two prisoner advocacy groups as the "bloodiest phase in the history of the prisoner movement" and the "most severe" in detention conditions, the total number of identified Palestinian prisoners to have died since 1967 has risen to 308.
"The case of the martyr Abu Habel is added to the record of the Israeli system of brutality, which operates around the clock through a series of organised crimes to kill prisoners and detainees," the prisoner advocacy groups said in a statement.
