A 17-year-old Palestinian teenager from the occupied West Bank town of Silwad has died in Israel’s Megiddo prison, raising the death toll of Palestinian detainees to 63 since October 2023, prisoner affairs groups have confirmed.

In a joint statement, the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmad was detained on September 30, 2024, and held without trial until his death.

In December, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz cited detainees as having reported several cases of abuse such as “guards kicking, punching, hitting their testicles, and humiliating prisoners.