Ramallah, April 23 (RHC)-- Five Palestinians imprisoned by the Israeli regime are going through a deteriorating health condition in the wake of their hunger strike to protest their illegal detention without charge or trial.

The Palestinian Committee for Prisoners' Affairs said in a statement that Hussam Ruzzi, Muhammad Tabanja, Khaled Farraj, Hassan Eweiwi, and Odeh Haroub had been on hunger strike for several days, Palestinian Ma'an news agency reported.

Deliberate medical negligence is a wide-spread punitive measure used against Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails.  It is also one of the commonly cited motivations for hunger strikers protesting the harsh prison conditions.

More than 7,000 Palestinians are reportedly held at Israeli jails. Hundreds of the inmates have apparently been incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention, a policy under which Palestinian inmates are kept in Israeli detention facilities without trial or charge. Some Palestinian prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years.