Havana (AFP) – Cuba’s coast guard said Wednesday it shot dead four people and wounded six others traveling in a US-registered speedboat during an exchange of fire near Cuba’s shores that came amid heightened tensions with Washington. Havana did not reveal the nationalities of the passengers aboard the Florida-registered boat nor why it was approaching the communist-run island, which is under strict US sanctions.
US Vice President JD Vance said the White House was “monitoring” the situation and that “hopefully it’s not as bad as we fear it could be.” Vance added that he had been briefed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is attending a summit of the Caribbean Community, but “we don’t know a whole lot of details.” The attorney general of Florida, which lies just 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Cuba across the Florida Straits, said he had ordered an investigation into the killings.
The Cuban interior ministry said the coast guard encountered the “illegal” US vessel, registration number FL7726SH, one nautical mile from Cayo Falcones island off Cuba’s north coast. As the coast guard vessel approached, “shots were fired from the illegal speedboat,” injuring the commander of the Cuban vessel, the ministry said. “As a result of the clash, at the time of this report, on the foreign side, four aggressors were killed and six others were wounded,” the ministry said, adding that the injured were evacuated and received medical assistance. It did not give the exact origin of the boat.
The Cuban government frequently reports incursions by speedboats from the United States into its territorial waters. The interior ministry said it was still investigating the incident and remained committed to protecting Cuban waters.
Incursion incidents are often related to people smuggling to the United States or drug trafficking, and have included chases, shootouts and armed attacks on border guards. Shortages of food and medicine and daily blackouts drove an exodus from the island in recent years, with many heading to southern Florida, which has received waves of Cuban migration since the 1960s.
Wednesday’s shootings came as Washington softened a virtual oil siege of the island imposed by President Donald Trump in January after the US ouster of top Cuba ally, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. Before Maduro’s ouster by US forces on January 3, Cuba had relied on Venezuela, once a major oil producer, for about half its fuel needs. Faced with an outcry from Caribbean leaders, worried that starving 9.6 million Cubans of oil would cause the economy to collapse, Washington said it would allow shipments of Venezuelan oil for “commercial and humanitarian use.”
The announcement came during a summit of Caribbean nations attended by US Secretary of State Rubio, a Cuban-American who has spent his career hoping to topple Havana’s government. The Treasury Department said the Venezuelan oil would need to go through private businesses and not the Cuban government or the military apparatus that controls much of the island’s economy. The US oil blockade in place for over a month has brought an already crumbling Cuban economy, which has been under a US trade embargo since shortly after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, to the brink.
Mexico on Tuesday dispatched two military vessels carrying nearly 2,200 tons of aid to the island — its second aid shipment in under a month. Canada also announced Can$8 million ($5.8 million) in aid on Wednesday.
© 2024 AFP
