GENEVA, Oct 7: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday the situation was serious inside the US Guantanamo Bay prison camp, where a number of prisoners are on hunger strike.

But ICRC spokeswoman Antonella Notari declined to comment on Thursday’s statement by a defence lawyer that the action involved 200 of 500 prisoners and that 21 were being force-fed.

“There is a hunger strike, the situation is serious, and we are following it with concern,” she said.

Under the terms of its confidential agreements with governments for access to inmates detained in conflict, the ICRC reports its findings and recommendations only to the detaining authorities. The neutral humanitarian agency’s officials, including doctors, regularly visit prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

They last visited the US naval base in Cuba last month, Ms Notari said. “During our recent 10-day visit we were able to visit the infirmary, see the detainees and speak with them as well as the American authorities,” she added.

A spokesman for the Guantanamo prison operation, Lieutenant-Colonel Jeremy Martin, said on Thursday that 28 prisoners were on hunger strike, meaning they had missed nine consecutive meals, and that 22 were being force-fed.

“All the detainees are clinically stable and will continue to receive nutrition and fluids as needed,” Martin said by e-mail.

The ICRC backs a 1975 Tokyo declaration by the World Medical Association stating that doctors should not take party in force-feeding but keep prisoners informed of the sometimes irreversible consequences of their hunger strike, Notari said.

Amnesty International and human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer representing some 40 detainees, said on Thursday that US authorities were keeping 21 alive by forcing food into their stomachs through tubes pushed up their noses.

The prisoners were on the 56th day of their strike and were shackled to their beds 24 hours a day to stop them removing the tubes, Stafford Smith said.

Force-feeding is not banned under international law, but the World Medical Association declaration, endorsed by the American Medical Association, sets guidelines for doctors involved in hunger strikes and says they should not participate in force-feeding.

The United States opened Guantanamo in January 2002. Many detainees were seized in Afghanistan. Only four of the prisoners there have been charged and many have been held more than three years. Some former prisoners have said they were tortured. —Reuters