US sends more medics to tackle Guantanamo hunger strike

US: Extra medical staff have been sent to the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay to help address a hunger strike that has spread to nearly two-thirds of the detainees, authorities said Monday.

With the strike now entering its 12th week, President Barack Obama has faced fresh calls to honor his promise to close the prison at the US base in Cuba, which holds 166 individuals captured as part of the “War on Terror.”

Some 40 US Navy medical personnel, including nurses and specialists, arrived over the weekend, said Lieutenant Colonel Samuel House, a military spokesman at Guantanamo.

“The influx of personnel was planned several weeks ago as increasing numbers of detainees chose to protest their detention,” he said. House said 100 of the 166 inmates are striking, a number that hasn’t changed since Saturday.

Of those, 21 are receiving feeding through nasal tubes, the spokesman said, one more than on Saturday.

Five are hospitalized, he added in the statement, without specifying whether any were in life-threatening condition.

However, he told AFP that none were close to dying, officially denying allegations by British Guantanamo expert Andy Worthington, who wrote on his blog that four prisoners were “close to death” as a result of the strike, citing a “credible source inside Guantanamo.”

One of the at-risk detainees, Worthington said, was Khiali Gul, one of 86 prisoners cleared for release yet jailed indefinitely.

AFP