Cuba unveils new details in fatal US boat shooting
Top officials with Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior unveiled for the first time on late Friday the items they said were aboard a Florida-flagged speedboat that opened fire against troops in waters off the island’s north coast this week, with soldiers responding and killing four suspects.
Officials also revealed to The Associated Press that authorities were able to establish that the 10 Cuban suspects left the US in two boats, but one failed, so they transferred all the supplies to the remaining one and left the other adrift.
The Government said the detained suspects revealed those details and stressed that they immediately contacted the US Coast Guard.
Among the items Cuban officials said were aboard the boat: a dozen high-powered weapons, including one with a scope; a big cooler filled with more than 12,800 pieces of ammunition; 11 pistols; heavy-duty boots, helmets with cameras; and camouflage backpacks.
“We were clearly able to assess that we were facing a terrorist action from a boat coming from the United States,” 1st Col. Ivey Daniel Carballo of the Cuban Border Guard Troops told the AP.
According to Carballo, the 30-foot (nine-meter) border patrol boat detected an intruder on Wednesday morning and approached to within about 600 feet (185 meters) to investigate, but it was met with high-caliber gunfire.
He said that three of the attackers were immediately killed and that a fourth was wounded and later died.
Caraballo said the speedboat was located about one mile (1.6 kilometers) northeast of Cayo Falcones off the island’s north coast. The border guard commander was injured, he added.
Victor Eduardo Alvarez Valle, one of the heads of Criminal Investigation for State Security at the Ministry of the Interior, told the AP that authorities were surprised by the resistance they encountered. “We didn’t expect it, especially with that many people and weapons,” he said. “The military equipment found on board has been identified by the assailants, including where and how they acquired it, and the training they received. They also revealed who financed it,” Alvarez added.
He noted that officials detected 13 bullet holes on the border guard boat and 21 others on the suspect’s vessel, “meaning that there was combat.” The Cuban Government had reported on Wednesday that a person had been captured on land, but Alvarez said that so far, there is no information that the suspects had any support network on the island.
