ANKARA The death toll from a series of hunger strikes in Turkish prisons rose to 15 Sunday with the death of a 24-year-old woman in an Istanbul hospital, human rights officials said.

The mainly left-wing political prisoners have been staging intermittent hunger strikes since October in protest at government plans to transfer them to new cell-type prisons.

In an attempt to end the hunger strikes and close down the old ward-type prisons where inmates effectively controlled their own wards, the government in December ordered raids on 20 prisons across the country. Thirty inmates and two gendarmes died in the four days of fighting.

While the government succeeded in having the majority of the political prisoners transferred to the new prisons, inmates are now calling for better conditions in the new jails.

(DPA)