LONDON: A Palestinian detainee died at Israel’s Assaf Harofeh Hospital on Sunday, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society announced.

Israeli forces had arrested Mahmoud Talal Abdullah, 49, on Feb. 1 in the Jenin refugee camp, which has been the site of Israeli military operations since January.

The PPS said that Abdullah’s health had severely deteriorated following his arrest, and it was eventually confirmed that he had cancer. He was transferred from Megiddo Prison to Gilboa Prison and later to the Ramla Prison clinic.

Israeli authorities kept him in detention, despite confirming his advanced-stage cancer, and he died the day after being transferred to Assaf Harofeh Hospital, the PPS added.

Abdullah had spent two years in Israeli prisons during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which lasted from 2000 to 2005.

The PPS said that Abdullah’s death added to the “series of crimes carried out by the Israeli occupation against Palestinian detainees as part of its ongoing genocidal war,” reported the Palestine News Agency.

His death raised to 79 the number of known prisoners and detainees who have died since the Israeli action in Gaza began in 2023.