SAN JOSÉ – Cuban soldiers confronted a speedboat carrying 10 people as the vessel approached the island and opened fire on the troops, who fired back, killing four and wounding six, according to the Cuban government.
The Cuban Ministry of the Interior said the people aboard the boat Wednesday were Cubans living in the U.S. and accused them of trying to infiltrate the country to engage in terrorism. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was not a U.S. government operation.
Recommended Videos
Here’s what to know about the confrontation that has resulted in investigations in both Cuba and the United States and could add to tensions between the two countries.
Cuban president says island will defend itself
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said Thursday that Cuba "does not attack or threaten.”
“We have stated this repeatedly, and we reiterate it today: Cuba will defend itself with determination and firmness against any terrorist or mercenary aggression that seeks to undermine its sovereignty and national stability,” he wrote on X.
Cuban authorities launched an investigation, the foreign minister said.
Rubio said the American government was gathering its own information, including whether the people were U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said it was pursuing answers “through every legal and diplomatic channel available.”
One man was obsessed with Cuban freedom
The wounded people were detained, Cuban officials said, and the government identified seven of the 10 passengers.
It said that two of them, Amijail Sánchez González and Leordan Enrique Cruz Gómez, are wanted by Cuban authorities “based on their involvement in the promotion, planning, organization, financing, support or commission" of terrorism.
It identified the others as Conrado Galindo Sariol, José Manuel Rodríguez Castelló, Cristian Ernesto Acosta Guevara and Roberto Azcorra Consuegra.
Cuba’s government said one of the four killed was Michel Ortega Casanova. His brother Misael Ortega Casanova told The Associated Press that his sibling had developed an “obsessive and diabolical” quest for Cuba’s freedom given the suffering they endured on the island before moving to the U.S. He said his brother was an American citizen who lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years.
Meanwhile, Galindo Sariol, another passenger, was identified as a former political prisoner in a 2025 interview with Martí Noticias, a U.S.-based news site that has long called for a change of government in Cuba.
The Cuban government said it was a Florida-registered speedboat and that officials who searched it found assault rifles, handguns, homemade explosives, bulletproof vests, telescopic sights and camouflage uniforms.
The AP was unable to verify details because boat registrations are not public in Florida.
Confrontations with US are not unusual, but deaths are rare
The island’s foreign minister wrote Thursday on X that Cuba has faced “numerous terrorist and aggressive infiltrations” from the U.S. since 1959, "with a high cost in lives, injuries and material damage.”
The most famous attempt involving Cuban exiles was the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961.
The CIA had trained a group of exiles under the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower that was led by José Miró Cardona, a former member of Fidel Castro ’s government and head of the Cuban Revolutionary Council in the U.S.
The failed invasion that occurred under former President John F. Kennedy led to the surrender of some 1,200 exiles, while more than 100 others were killed.
Another high-profile encounter occurred on Feb. 24, 1996, when Cuba’s air force shot down two unarmed civilian airplanes operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based organization. Four men were killed following the attack that the International Civil Aviation Organization said occurred over international waters.
According to the radio communications between the MiG-29 and a military control tower published by the Organization of American States, the MiG-29 celebrated upon striking the second plane: "Homeland or death, you bastards!” in a reference to the famed Cuban revolutionary cry.
In 2022, several incidents were reported in Cuban waters involving an exchange of gunfire and arrests but no apparent casualties.
It’s not unusual for skirmishes to erupt between Cuba’s Coast Guard and U.S.-flagged speedboats in Cuban waters, although deaths are rare. In past years, some of those U.S.-flagged boats were laden with unidentified cargo headed toward the island, or they were going to pick up Cubans to smuggle them into the U.S.
The potential effects on US-Cuba relations
The shooting threatens to increase tensions between the two countries after President Donald Trump 's administration has already having taken an increasingly aggressive stance toward Cuba.
When the U.S. attacked Venezuela and arrested its leader on Jan. 3, oil shipments to Cuba that were largely keeping the island afloat were halted.
Then Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 29 that would impose a tariff on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba, which recently implemented austere fuel-saving measures.
William LeoGrande an American University expert on Cuba, said there's a risk that the Trump administration “uses this incident as some kind of an excuse to come up with even more sanctions.”
"But if the Cuban government lays out all the guns that they captured and has some of these people confessing to what they were up to, that might put the issue to rest,” he told journalists Thursday in an online briefing.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury Department slightly eased restrictions on the sale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, but the island’s energy and economic crisis is expected to persist.
LeoGrande said Cuba's private sector would not import enough oil “to really make a significant dent in the humanitarian crisis."