Cuba said it thwarted gunmen trying to infiltrate from the United States as its coastguard opened fire Wednesday at a Florida-registered speedboat near its shores, killing four people and wounding six.
The clash was a new source of tension with Washington as the communist-ruled nation endures intense US pressure following the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
Havana’s interior ministry said people arrested after an exchange of gunfire with the boat claimed they “intended to carry out an infiltration for the purposes of terrorism.”
The ministry said assault rifles, handguns, Molotov cocktails and other military-style gear were found on the vessel and the 10 occupants were all Cubans living in the United States.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington was seeking its own facts about the shooting and would “respond accordingly.”
“We’re not going to base our conclusions on what they’ve (Cuba) told us, and I’m very, very confident that we will know the full story of what happened here,” Rubio told reporters while on a trip to the Caribbean nation of St Kitts and Nevis.
“As we gather more information, then we’ll be prepared to respond accordingly,” he said.
The attorney general of Florida, which lies just 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Cuba across the Florida Straits, ordered an investigation into the killings.
The Cuban interior ministry earlier said the coast guard encountered the “illegal” US vessel, whose registration number it gave as FL7726SH, one nautical mile from Cayo Falcones island off Cuba’s northern 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.
In its second statement the ministry released the names of seven of the people on the speedboat. It said most of the 10 had records in Cuba for “criminal and violent activity.”
A man sent from the United States to take part in this operation was arrested on Cuban soil and confessed, it added.
The Cuban government frequently reports incursions by speedboats from the United States into its territorial waters.
US lawmaker with Cuban roots, Carlos Gimenez, demanded an investigation into the deaths.
“United States authorities must determine whether any of the victims were US citizens or legal residents and establish exactly what occurred,” he said.
“The regime in Cuba must be relegated to the dustbin of history for its countless crimes against humanity.”
– People-smuggling –
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 a 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 the summit of Caribbean nations attended by 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.
