WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- Prisoners on hunger strike in the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said warders misused feeding tubes on them as punishment, according to affidavits filedby their attorneys.

    According to the affidavits released Thursday by a federal court in Washington DC, the hunger strikers said they were force-fed with dirty feeding tubes which were violently inserted and withdrawn.

    The treatment was intended to persuade them to end the hunger strike, said the prisoners.

    Since Aug. 9, some 200 of the 500 prisoners in Guantanamo have been staging a hunger strike in rotation to protest abuses by warders while demanding for public trials or release instead of being detained indefinitely.

    The hunger strikers were force-fed by the US military with feeding-tubes.

    At present, there are 25 detainees on hunger strike, including 22 who are being force-fed.

    John Edmondson, the chief doctor at Guantanamo prison, dismissed the allegations.

    He said in a statement that only doctors or nurses are allowed to remove insert feeding tubes and that they are using a lubricant and offering an anesthetic to the hunger striking prisoner to easeany pain.

    At Guantanamo Bay, the US military holds about 500 detainees suspected of terrorist activities, most of them were caught in the US military operations against Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

    US authorities labeled them as "enemy combatants", which means they could be detained indefinitely without a trial. Enditem ¡¡