Palestine died on Monday from injuries sustained while in the custody of the Israeli armed forces two months ago, the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank announced yesterday.

“Former detainee Wafa Jarrar, 50, from Jenin (…) died yesterday Monday morning at the Avicenna Hospital in Jenin due to the very serious injuries she sustained during her detention,” announced the Prisoners’ Commission, an organization under to the Palestinian Authority.

Asked about this by AFP, the Israeli army said it was looking into the issue.

Wafa Jarrar, the wife of a Hamas official in Jenin, in the northern West Bank, was arrested on May 21.

She was released nine days after her arrest, according to the Prisoners’ Association, a Palestinian non-governmental prisoners’ advocacy organization. She was taken directly to a hospital, where she remained, unconscious, until her death yesterday morning.

Wafa Jarrar “is dead and her history will be buried with her because we don’t know exactly how she was injured,” Amani Sarana, spokeswoman for the Prisoners’ Association, summarized to AFP.

The Commission and the Association denounced in their statement that Israel committed a “crime” against the deceased, which resulted in both of her legs being amputated below the knees in a hospital in the Israeli city of Afola (north).

Wafa Jarrar was the wife of Abdul Jabbar Jarrar, who was also jailed for over six months.

Since the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip on October 7 between Israel and Hamas, thousands of Palestinians have been arrested, in the enclave, in the West Bank and in Israeli territory, many of whom have been alleged to have suffered torture and sexual violence, underlined this week the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Ten UN experts warned on Monday against Israel’s “escalating use of torture” against Palestinian prisoners since the war in the Gaza Strip began, denouncing “absolute impunity” and calling for crimes against humanity to be prevented.

Israeli authorities assure that international law is respected in the country’s prisons.

The military arm of Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, launched an unprecedented raid on southern sectors of the Israeli territory on October 7, killing 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to AFP tally based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people abducted that day, 111 are believed to be still being held hostage in the small enclave, but 39 are believed to be dead, according to the Israeli military.

The large-scale operations since then carried out in retaliation by the Israeli armed forces in the Gaza Strip have so far killed some 40,000 people, according to figures from the Hamas health ministry.