More prisoners have joined a hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention at the US-run Guantanamo military prison, with 97 out of 166 detainees refusing food, a spokesman said Friday. Among the strikers, 19 have been given feeding tubes, and five of those are hospitalized but do not have life-threatening conditions, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel House said in a statement. The rapidly growing protest movement began on February 6, lawyers for the detainees said. Prison authorities began releasing figures on the strike on March 11, saying nine inmates were participating.

A Swiss prisoner jailed for violent crime in 2009 died Wednesday after launching a hunger strike more than 10 weeks ago to try to win his freedom, local security authorities said. The 32-year-old man, who was not identified by name, passed away in a hospital in Baar in eastern Switzerland, the security department of the canton of Zug said in a statement. "The individual, who was in full possession of his mental faculties, made a conscious choice to refuse food," it said. The man's stated goal was to be released, which was impossible under the law.

His body ravaged and weakened by a 50-day hunger strike staged in protest at alleged mistreatment of Korans at Guantanamo jail, Abd al-Malik Abd al-Wahab has a message for his loved ones. "Tell my family if I die to forgive me," said Abd al-Wahab, a 33-year-old Yemeni national who has spent 11 years -- or a third of his life -- behind bars at the controversial US detention facility in Cuba.

A Palestinian prisoner on long-term hunger strike has inked a deal with Israel which will see him freed to exile in Gaza for 10 years, a prisoners' rights group said Sunday. Ayman Sharawna is one of four Palestinian prisoners who have been refusing food for months over the conditions of their detention by Israel, whose cases have sparked expressions of concern from the United Nations and the European Union.