Occupied West Bank (Quds News Network)- A 17-year-old Palestinian died in Israel's notorious Megiddo Prison on Saturday under unclear circumstances, amid reports of torture and mistreatment. The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said they had been informed of the death of Walid Ahmed in Megiddo Prison by the Israeli Civil Administration. Ahmed, who was from the West Bank town of Silwad, had been imprisoned since his arrest in September 2024, the groups said, adding that they had not yet been able to ascertain the circumstances of his death. The Israeli Prison Service said in a statement that "a 17-year-old security detainee from the West Bank died yesterday [Saturday] in Megiddo Prison", without identifying him, or giving any details about the circumstances of his death. A "security" detainee is classified as someone who is arrested on anything from stone-throwing to suspicion of being involved in a protest movement. The Palestinian Liaison Officr told Ahmed’s family that their son suffered from scabies and amoebic dysentery, according to Defense for Children- Palestine (DCIP). Ahmed is the first Palestinian child to ever die inside Israeli prisons, according to DCIP. Israeli occupation is withholding his body from his family. “Walid was taken from his family in the middle of the night, beaten and abused by Israeli soldiers, and imprisoned in Israel, where he was fed meager portions of rotten food and subjected to overcrowded, unsanitary conditions while at the same time isolated completely from his family,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. “Walid is the first Palestinian child prisoner in history to die in Israeli custody. It is impossible to understate the urgency with which the international community must finally hold Israeli authorities accountable before more Palestinian children imprisoned in Israel’s dungeons suffer Walid’s fate.” Ahmed was kept in poor conditions with limited communication from his lawyer and family. At the time of his death, he was in pre-trial detention, DCIP said. “The lawyer asked Walid, ‘how are you? How is your health?’” recounted Walid’s father, Khaled, in a video interview with DCIP last year, “He asked how the food was and Walid told him it was bad. The judge immediately cut off the call." Megiddo Prison has long been known for its brutal treatment of Palestinian detainees. According to Haaretz, prisoners there have been subjected to electric shocks, dog attacks, and severe beatings. Some were stripped naked, bound hand and foot for days, and denied food and blankets, with several hospitalised due to the abuse. A 2024 report by the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs further detailed the horrors inside Megiddo, documenting systematic torture, medical neglect, sexual violence and routine beatings. In a statement, the two prisoner advocacy groups said that Ahmed is the sixty-third Palestinian detainee to have died in detention since Israel unleashed its assault on Gaza in October 2023 - a toll which includes at least 40 people from Gaza. They added that the period since October 2023 has seen an "unprecedented" rise in the "systematic crimes practised in [Israeli] prisons," making it the "bloodiest in the history of the prisoner movement since 1967". Ahmed's death brings the total number of Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody since 1967 to 300, although they noted that the figures are likely an underestimate as dozens of detainees captured in Gaza are subject to enforced disappearance. They added that Israel is holding the bodies of 72 Palestinian detainees, including 61 since the beginning of its war on Gaza. As of early March, the number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli custody has topped 9,500, including over 350 children, 21 women and 3,405 administrative detainees, according to the PPS. Ahmed is the 18th Palestinian child killed in the occupied West Bank in 2025, according to DCIP.