69-year-old Palestinian Died in Israeli Custody After Being Shot With Rubber-Coated Bullet, Ex-Detainee Says
Kamel Mohammad al-Ajrami was reportedly shot in the head with a rubber-coated bullet and left to bleed for hours. He's among the at least 80 Palestinians who have died in Israeli custody since Oct. 7.
On Monday, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society announced the death of Kamel Mohammad al-Ajrami, a 69-year-old Palestinian detainee, at Soroka Hospital in Israel. According to the organization, al-Ajrami died on Oct. 10, 2025.
Al-Ajrami had been detained by Israeli forces on Oct. 25, 2024, after being abducted from Gaza. He was the father of six children.
Two days ago, I spoke with a relative of mine who was recently released from one of the Israeli detention camps. He began by expressing deep sorrow over al-Ajrami’s death.
When I asked if he had known al-Ajrami personally, he told me about an incident that occurred on Sept. 30, 2025, shortly before midnight. According to him, Israeli prison guards stormed their cell at the Negev Prison and fired rubber-coated bullets at the detainees, a practice described by many other released prisoners.
Al-Ajrami was shot in the head and left to bleed while detainees pleaded with the guards to take him to the hospital. The guards reportedly dismissed their pleas, saying, “No, you are all lying.”
The following day, guards carried al-Ajrami away on a stretcher.
“That was the last time we saw him,” my relative said.
When the detainees later asked the guards about al-Ajrami’s condition, they were told only that “he is doing well.”
The Israeli Prison Service did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Al-Ajrami’s death is not an isolated case. Since October 2023, at least 80 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody due to torture, medical negligence, or other forms of mistreatment, according to Palestinian human rights organizations.
Despite the release of more than 1,700 detainees, over 9,000 Palestinians remain in Israeli prisons and detention camps. Many of them are held under administrative detention, that is, without charge or trial, effectively held as hostages. This figure does not include the Palestinian bodies withheld by Israel, some of which have been kept for decades in what are known as “cemeteries of numbers.”
Zeteo contributor Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and writer from Gaza. He won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for commentary and the 2024 OPC’s Flora Lewis Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2023.
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