JERUSALEM: Some 3,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails observed a day-long hunger strike on Sunday in protest against the death of an inmate, an official said, as Israeli occupation forces clashed with demonstrators in the West Bank.

“About 3,000 prisoners announced that they would refuse meals,” Israel Prisons Service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman told AFP. “It’s just the meals of one day; three meals.”

Arafat Jaradat, a 30-year-old father of two, from the village of Sair near Al Khalil city in the southern West Bank, died suddenly on Saturday in an Israeli jail from what prison authorities said appeared to have been cardiac arrest.

Protesters in his home village and in different parts of Al Khalil on Sunday hurled stones at Israeli forces who responded with tear gas and stun grenades, witnesses said.

The Palestinian Prisoners' Club meanwhile said the number of inmates on open-ended hunger strike had climbed to 11 from four.

Mr Jaradat’s death came a day after nearly 100 Palestinians were wounded in clashes with Israeli forces during protests in the West Bank to demand the release of the hunger strikers.

A statement from the office of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Saturday said he “expresses his deep sorrow and shock over the martyrdom of prisoner Arafat Jaradat in Israeli occupation prisons”.

He “affirms the need to promptly disclose the true reasons that led to his martyrdom”, it added.

The Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip said the prisoner had died because of “the inhuman conditions in Israeli jails”.

Israel’s Shin Bet internal intelligence service said Mr Jaradat had been arrested on Monday for his alleged involvement in a stone-throwing incident in November 2012.

“After lunch, as he was resting in Megiddo prison, Arafat Jaradat was taken ill. Medics were called to treat him but they were unable to save his life,” it added. Israeli police were now probing the death.—AFP