WOOMERA (Australia), Jan 27: Hundreds more asylum seekers joined a hunger strike on Sunday as the pressure mounted on Australia to resolve an escalating crisis.

Refugee groups said detainees had resorted to drastic action to highlight their plight and warned that further instances of self-harm were inevitable unless authorities acted.

The immigration department said 162 men, 14 women and five children, mostly Afghans, were refusing to eat for a 12th day at the Woomera Detention Centre in southern Australia, although a lawyer representing them said on Sunday the figure had swelled to 370.

The asylum seekers are upset at delays in processing their asylum claims and the conditions in which they are being held.

Across the country, protests escalated with at least 20 asylum seekers going on hunger strike at two detention centres in Western Australia.

The Refugee Action Collective said 35 people inside Melbourne’s Maribyrnong Detention Centre were refusing food, although they were accepting fluids.

Noisy demonstrations in support of the hunger strikers were staged outside the Port Hedland detention centre in Western Australia, Melbourne’s Maribyrnong and the Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney.

On Saturday, there were violent disturbances at Woomera, in the baking South Australian desert, when a man seriously injured himself by diving into a razor wire fence in an attempt to escape.

Three children involved in the Woomera hunger strike were taken to hospital overnight for “observation”. One child is already being treated.

Thirty-five detainees, including one child, have their lips sewn together, an immigration department spokesman said. So far at least 15 protesters have tried to hang themselves. Others have swallowed shampoo and painkillers.

At the Curtin detention centre in Western Australia six inmates swallowed poisonous liquids on Saturday and were treated in hospital.

Paul Boylan, a lawyer representing the detainees in Woomera, said those with sewn lips would remove the stitches if regional-specific interpreters were supplied and Iraqi and Iranian children could go to school. He said more asylum seekers had joined the hunger strike in a show of unity, although they would take fluids.

“The lawyers have been advising our clients that violent actions — actions that hurt or maim — are not appropriate,” Boylan said.

In Woomera, journalists were ordered away from the facility after reporting on the unrest on Saturday. The Immigration Department denied it gave any directive for the journalists to be muzzled.

An Australian Broadcasting Corp journalist was arrested when she refused as the government tries to draw a veil over the camp.—AFP