ANKARA A longstanding hunger strike over Turkish prison reforms claimed another life, bringing the death toll among prisoners and their supporters to 26, the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD) said Saturday.

Zehra Kulaksiz, whose uncle was in jail, died Friday on the 223rd day of her hunger strike in support of the prison protest launched by mainly left-wing inmates in October to protest the introduction of new jails with tighter security, the IHD said in a written statement.

She died in an Istanbul house where she was hunger striking with other prisoners' relatives, it added.

In an interview with AFP in April, 22-year-old Zehra had defended her deadly protest as a "humanitarian duty" in a bid to improve conditions in Turkish prisons.

"We will not abandon our fast as long as the demands of the prisoners are not met and until they themselves have stopped the movement," Kulaksiz had said at the time.

Her sister, Canan, a 19-year-old university student, had also died in the same house in April on the 137th day of her strike in solidarity with the prisoners.

Friday's death means that 21 inmates, four prisoners' relatives and one former inmate have starved themselves to death since March.

The prison protest is aimed against new jails, commonly known as "F-type" prisons, which consist of cells holding a maximum of three people, in contrast to existing jails with large dormitories for up to 60 people.

The prisoners and human rights activists claim that confinement in smaller units would alienate inmates from fellow prisoners and leave them more vulnerable to ill-treatment and torture by prison officials.

Despite the mounting death toll and international pressure, the government has refused to back down on the introduction of the new prisons.

Ankara maintains the packed dormitories are the main factor behind frequent riots and hostage-taking incidents in its unruly jails.

In December, thousands of paramilitary troops raided scores of prisons across the country in a bid to break the hunger strike during a four-day crackdown which left 30 prisoners and two soldiers dead.

Since then, more than 1,000 inmates have been transferred to F-type prisons despite a government pledge that the new jails would not become operational until a social consensus has been reached on their introduction.

The government has recently adopted a series of laws to improve conditions for its inmates, but the moves have been brushed aside by rights activists and civic groups as insufficient.

The prison strike has placed Turkey's bleak human rights record in the international spotlight at a time when the country needs to make far-reaching democratic reforms in order to promote its bid for European Union membership.