The "corpsmen, nurses, and other specialists" arrived over the weekend "as part of a contingency during the ongoing hunger strike," Army Lt. Col. Samuel House said in a statement.

House reported that five of the hunger strikers were at the prison camps hospital, although none had life-threatening conditions.

"The influx of personnel was planned several weeks ago as increasing numbers of detainees chose to protest their detention," he added.

House issued the statement just before noon Monday, saying "currently only a handful of detainees are being tube-fed." He sought to distinguish between those designated for forced-feedings and those actually strapped to a feeding chair to have a tube snaked up the nose and into the stomach to pump in a can of Ensure or a similar nutritional supplement up to twice daily.

Captives are moved in shackles from their cell to a separate forced-feeding site, House said in a statement where "most of the detainees who are approved for tube feeding will eat or drink without the peer pressure from inside the cell block."