Cuban Police kill four crew members of a US civilian vessel

Havana.- The Border Guard Troop of Cuba killed four crew members of a speedboat from the US this Wednesday who did not obey when ordered to stop in territorial waters and opened fire on the police vessel, reported the Ministry of the Interior (Minint).

The official statement, replicated in several state media outlets, also indicated that six other people from the speedboat were injured in the exchange, as well as “the commander of the Cuban vessel”, in which a total of five people were patrolling.

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Cuban authorities also indicated that all the injured “were evacuated and received medical assistance.” The incident occurred in the morning of this Wednesday, when the Cuban authorities detected “an infringing speedboat within Cuban territorial waters with Florida, United States, registration number FL7726SH”. So, according to the Minint report, the vessel approached “northeast of the El Pino channel, in Cayo Falcones, Corralillo municipality, Villa Clara province” (central Cuba) where a unit with five members of the Border Guard Troops approached it “for identification”. Subsequently, “from the offending boat, fire was opened against the Cuban forces”, who in turn also responded with shots.

In this exchange, four members of the speedboat died and a total of seven people were injured (six people traveling in the civilian boat and one member of the Border Guard Troop).

The Ministry of the Interior did not provide any information at this time about the identities or possible motivations of the members of the speedboat. The incident occurs amid high tension between the United States and Cuba, after Washington imposed an oil siege on the island and urged Havana to reach an agreement. In recent years, several incidents of this type have been reported, two of them from the year 2022. In one case, a speedboat from the U.S. fired at Cuban border guard forces near Villa Clara and wounded a Cuban officer. The other event occurred in Bahía Honda (west) when a boat from the U.S. collided with a Minint patrol boat, resulting in the sinking of the former and the death of several of its crew members. The island authorities frequently report the discovery of abandoned or captured speedboats on the north coast (Ciego de Ávila, Villa Clara, Havana) commonly used to pick up potential migrants, pointing out these actions as “territorial violations and human trafficking”.