Asylum seekers held at an Australian detention camp have tried to hang themselves in frustration after waiting for two years behind barbed wire for refugee claims to be processed.
Mr Cyrus Sarang, president of pressure group Refugee Action Collective, said detainees at the Woomera camp told him 15 illegal immigrants strung themselves up from the ceiling with bed sheets overnight.
A 16-year-old boy was injured and all those who had attempted to take their own lives had been put in isolation, he said.
"They are doing it in desperation and if they get the opportunity you will hear some are dead," said Mr Sarang.
Immigration Department officials said four detainees, including a child, were treated overnight at Woomera, which has seen nine days of hunger strikes and symbolic lip-sewing.
Three Afghan teenagers from Woomera, 475 kilometres north of Adelaide, are already in hospital suffering from dehydration and seven other detainees were rushed to hospital on Tuesday after swallowing shampoo and painkillers.
Many Australians have been shocked by the mouth-sewing protests at Woomera, in which 64 of some 200 Afghan hunger strikers symbolically threaded a strand of cotton through their lips.
The government responded with outrage, and today removed five children detained at the camp without their parents in order to protect them from "coercion" by adults.
The disturbances have put pressure on the government to review its hard line against illegal immigrants.