WASHINGTON -- The number of Guantanamo Bay detainees officially recognized as hunger strikers by the military rose to 94 on Thursday, a spokesman said Thursday. Seventeen of the detainees are being force-fed and three of them are in the hospital with non-life threatening conditions, the spokesman said.
Lt. Col. Sam House also said that no detainees had tried to commit suicide since April 14, the day after guards raided Guantanamo's Camp Six and forced detainees who had been living in a communal environment back into their individual cells. There were two suicide attempts over a two-day period earlier this month.
The number of recognized hunger strikers has more than doubled since the raid, as the military had previously only recognized 43 detainees as hunger strikers. The military's Muslim advisor in Guantanamo, who predicted last week that more than one detainee would die before the hunger strike ended, said that medical officials had not been able to determine how many of the detainees were hunger striking when Camp Six was a communal operation because they could not evaluate them individually.
Additional medical personnel are headed to Guantanamo to deal with the large number of detainees hunger striking.
Guantanamo currently holds 166 detainees, only a handful of whom have ever been charged. The government has said it plans to hold many of the detainees indefinitely without trial.
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