A statement by Hamas leader Mahmoud Mardawi highlights “daily torture and abuse” facing Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, Al Jazeera reports.

Mardawi said international rights groups, specifically the Red Cross, have a responsibility to monitor Palestinian prisoners’ conditions and “take serious action” to end Israel’s “crimes” against them.

The appeal came a day after a 60-year-old prisoner died in Israeli custody — the 66th such death during Israel’s war on Gaza, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society.

Mardawi, according to the Hamas statement, “stressed the need for effective Palestinian action at all levels to rescue prisoners from the hell of prisons and send a clear message to the world that the Palestinian people will not abandon their prisoners to the oppression of the occupation”.