Asylum seekers' protest continues

The hunger strikers have been without food since Tuesday night

A hunger strike by a group of asylum seekers entered its third day on Friday.

A group of 11 is protesting about the time it is taking for their applications to stay in the UK to be processed.

The protest at the immigration centre at Oakington near Cambridge began on Wednesday.

Initially 40 protesters joined the hunger strike, including Jamaicans, Albanians and Lithuanians.

Asylum seekers from so-called "white list" states are supposed to have their applications dealt with within 10 days at Oakington, the Home Office's fast-track detention processing centre.

But some of the protesters told BBC Look East their applications had taken as long as three months.

A spokesman for the hunger strikers said they wanted to know why processing was taking so long.

"People are getting depressed and fed up. They are sick and tired of what is going on. We just want to know what is going on," he said.

A total of 90 people are being detained at Oakington, which is run by Group 4.