Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior has announced that its border patrol forces engaged in a shootout with a speedboat from the United States, killing four people.

In a statement published on social media, the Cuban government described the boat as having a licence plate from the state of Florida, a peninsula roughly 145 kilometres, or 90 miles, from the island.

It also accused the speedboat of firing the first shot, precipitating an exchange of gunfire.

“The crew of the violating speedboat opened fire on the Cuban personnel, resulting in the injury of the commander of the Cuban vessel,” the statement said.

“As of the time of this report, four aggressors on the foreign vessel were killed, and six were injured.”

The shooting took place on Wednesday morning, offshore from the barrier island Cayo Falcones in Cuba’s north-central Villa Clara province.

In a follow-up statement, the Interior Ministry identified one of the four deceased as Michel Ortega Casanova. It also revealed the names of the six suspects arrested on the boat, all of them “Cuban residents of the United States”.

Their mission, according to the Interior Ministry, was to “carry out an infiltration for terrorist purposes” on Cuban soil. It accused the 10 men of transporting guns, Molotov cocktails, bulletproof vests and camouflage as part of their efforts.

A seventh arrest, the ministry added, was made within Cuba itself. That person, identified as Duniel Hernández Santos, was described as “a citizen sent from the United States to facilitate the reception of the armed infiltration”.

⁠Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman said ⁠on Thursday ⁠that the incident was an “aggressive provocation by ⁠the United States” aimed ⁠at escalating the ⁠situation and ⁠triggering a conflict, ⁠TASS news agency reported.

Investigations ongoing

Wednesday’s incident is not the first time that Cuban authorities have engaged in a gunfight after allegedly intercepting US boats entering its territory.

Still, the latest example could prove to be particularly contentious, given the heightened tensions over the last two months between the US and Cuba.

Already, there has been a political backlash to the shooting in the US, particularly within the right-wing Republican Party.

Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, announced his state would open a probe into the incident, amid calls for accountability in the US Congress.

“I’ve directed the Office of Statewide Prosecution to work with our federal, state, and law enforcement partners to begin an investigation,” Uthmeier wrote on social media.

“The Cuban government cannot be trusted, and we will do everything in our power to hold these communists accountable.”

An investigation led by Cuban officials remains ongoing. The island’s Interior Ministry, however, framed the border patrol’s actions as part of its larger defence of Cuba’s national sovereignty.

“In the face of current challenges, Cuba reaffirms its determination to protect its territorial waters, based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar of the Cuban State in safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region,” the ministry wrote.

United States Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, described the situation as one the US was “monitoring”. He acknowledged he had spoken with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the incident.

“Hopefully, it’s not as bad as we fear it could be, but can’t say more because I just don’t know,” Vance said.

Rubio himself addressed the shooting from the sidelines of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) conference in St Kitts. He denied that the speedboat was part of a US government operation.

“Suffice it to say, it is highly unusual to see shootouts in open sea like that,” Rubio said. “ It’s not something that happens every day. It’s something frankly that hasn’t happened with Cuba in a very long time.”

Tense relations with the US

The shootout comes at a delicate time for Cuba’s international relations, as it becomes increasingly isolated — and as the US threatens military action in Latin America.

One of Cuba’s closest regional allies, for instance, has seen upheaval at the hands of US forces. On January 3, US President Donald Trump authorised an early-morning military operation to abduct then-President Nicolas Maduro, transporting him to the US for trial.

Shortly after the attack, Trump and officials like Rubio issued statements suggesting they would welcome the fall of Cuba’s communist government.

“Look, if I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned,” Rubio, a longtime anti-Cuba hawk, told reporters.

Trump, meanwhile, was more blunt. “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall,” he said in the immediate aftermath of the Venezuela attack.

In the weeks since, the US announced it would cut off supplies of Venezuelan money and oil to Cuba, and on January 29, it imposed an oil blockade on the island, threatening Cuba’s trading partners with sanctions.

In an executive order, Trump accused Cuba of representing an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US, citing its ties with adversarial governments like those in Iran, China and Russia.

“The Government of Cuba has taken extraordinary actions that harm and threaten the United States,” Trump wrote in the order. “The regime aligns itself with — and provides support for — numerous hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors adverse to the United States.”

Cuba is one of several countries that have been subject to a “maximum pressure” campaign under Trump, who has sought to exert increasing influence over the Western Hemisphere.

Relations with the US, however, have long been tense. As far back as 1958, Cuba came under a US arms embargo that was later expanded in the 1960s to a full trade embargo, spanning all products and services.

The embargo cut Cuba off from one of its closest trading partners at the time. Officials and rights experts have also argued that the historically long embargo worsened humanitarian conditions on the island, which has suffered from a weakened economy and supply shortages.

History of shootouts

The US government, however, has cited a history of human rights abuses on the island as a reason for maintaining economic sanctions against Cuba.

In 2021, during Trump’s first term, Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior and its leader, Minister Lazaro Alvarez Casas, were both sanctioned as “perpetrators of serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world”.

The Cuban government has faced decades of accusations that it restricts free speech and violently represses dissent.

It also has a history of engaging in violent shootouts with boats it accuses of violating its territorial sovereignty.

The political repression, combined with economic turmoil, has forced many Cubans to flee the country over the past six decades.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the early 2020s, for instance, one of Cuba’s main industries, tourism, saw a stark drop in revenue.

That, in turn, caused dire shortages of basic supplies, prompting nearly two million people — more than 10 percent of the population — to leave the island.

But the Cuban government has, at times, responded with violence to irregular migration from the island.

In June 2022, for instance, Cuba reported two shootouts in quick succession involving speedboats accused of smuggling its citizens abroad. One, on June 18 of that year, resulted in an officer wounded. A second, on June 27, resulted in the death of a person on board the speedboat.

In such cases, the Cuban government has typically framed the violence as spurred by the actions of the speedboats in question. It has also cited the need to protect its territory and stability.

There are activist networks, particularly in the large Cuban American community in South Florida, that have worked for decades to help refugees escape from the island.

But they, too, have experienced losses. One of the most famous incidents came in 1996, when a small plane piloted by the activist group Brothers to the Rescue was shot down by the Cuban military.

In his comments to the media, Secretary of State Rubio acknowledged that such shootings have happened in the past. But he underscored there was no intelligence so far to indicate a parallel between those events and what happened on Wednesday.

“Yes, there have been people in the past that have run into Cuba to bring people and so on. It is illegal. It is a violation of federal law,” Rubio said.

“We’ve caught people doing that in the past. It doesn’t normally lead to shootouts, to be honest with you.”

Backlash in the US

Florida politicians were among the first to condemn Wednesday’s shooting. Congress member Carlos Gimenez, a Republican who represents the Florida Keys and southern Miami, said that the incident “raises serious concerns about the use of lethal force”.

“United States authorities must determine whether any of the victims were US citizens or legal residents and establish exactly what occurred,” he wrote in a statement.

Gimenez, who was born in Havana and fled the Cuban Revolution, then called for an end to Cuba’s communist government.

“The regime in Cuba must be relegated to the dustbin of history for its countless crimes against humanity,” he said.

Senator Rick Scott of Florida reposted Gimenez’s appeal for an investigation and added his own message of condemnation: “The Communist Cuban regime must be held accountable!”

Speaking from the CARICOM conference on Wednesday, Rubio explained that the US Coast Guard had been deployed to the area.

At the time of his comments, Rubio explained that the US government only had the information supplied by Cuba. But, he added, US diplomats and military members were seeking more details to “verify independently” what happened.

“ We have our embassy on the ground in Havana, working this as we speak, asking for access to the people that were on those vessels, if they were American citizens or permanent residents,” Rubio said.

“I’m not going to speculate. I’m not going to opine on what I don’t know. But we’re going to find out exactly what happened here, and then we’ll respond accordingly.”

•PHOTO:Strong waves crash along the coast in Havana, Cuba, on February 23

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