HAVANA ( Associated Press) – Six people from a group of 15 people who tried to leave illegally in a pastoral boat were found by Cuban border troops and the ship was wrecked last week, the Interior Ministry said on Monday. A report from There are no reports of the other nine.
A statement from the agency released by official media indicated that in the early hours of June 22, agents of the National Revolutionary Police found a civilian on the coast in the town of Santa Cruz del Norte, Mayabec – about 50 kilometers from the capital – skin irritation and dehydration. and who “mentioned to be part of a group of 15 men who jumped into the sea in a boat.”
According to reports from the Ministry of the Interior, the ship would have left the Playa Jibacoa area – about 10 kilometers from where the man was found – on the night of June 20 “with the purpose of leaving the country”. The country boat must have capsized “a considerable distance from the shore” on the morning of the 21st.
Upon learning of the wreck, border guard troops, airborne and local population units were mobilized to locate the survivors.
So far, the statement said, “assistance” has been given to around six people in a group of 15.
Cuba is going through one of the strongest emigration flows to the United States in decades, while Washington faces a strong economic crisis under tightening sanctions that seeks to pressure changes to the political model on the island. Is.
According to information provided by the United States Department of Customs and Border Protection, from October 2021 – when the fiscal year began – to the end of May, approximately 140,000 encounters between officials and Cuban migrants at land borders were reported . That country, a record figure that surpassed the Mariel exodus in 1980 when 1,25,000 people emigrated.
While the Coast Guard reported last week that so far this fiscal year, it had intercepted 2,464 migrants at sea and recorded 39 deaths from those traveling in unsafe ships through the Florida Straits.
