Cuba says it killed 4 people aboard Florida-registered speedboat that opened fire on soldiers

Cu­ba’s gov­ern­ment said Wednes­day that its sol­diers killed four peo­ple aboard a speed boat reg­is­tered in Flori­da that opened fire on of­fi­cers in Cuban wa­ters.

Cu­ba’s In­te­ri­or Min­istry is­sued a state­ment that pro­vid­ed few de­tails about the shoot­ing, but not­ed that the boat was rough­ly 1 mile (1.6 kilo­me­ters) north­east of Cayo Fal­cones, off Cu­ba’s north coast.

It was un­clear if any U.S. cit­i­zens were aboard.

The gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed the boat’s reg­is­tra­tion num­ber, but The As­so­ci­at­ed Press was un­able to read­i­ly ver­i­fy de­tails of the boat be­cause boat reg­is­tra­tions are not pub­lic in the state of Flori­da.

Of­fi­cials said one Cuban of­fi­cer was in­jured, four sus­pects killed and six oth­ers in­jured.

It wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly known what the boat and its oc­cu­pants were do­ing in Cuban wa­ters.

In the state­ment, the min­istry said Cu­ba’s gov­ern­ment was “safe­guard­ing its sov­er­eign­ty and en­sur­ing sta­bil­i­ty in the re­gion.”

James Uth­meier, Flori­da’s at­tor­ney gen­er­al, said he has or­dered pros­e­cu­tors to work with fed­er­al, state and law en­force­ment part­ners to start an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

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

Mean­while, Flori­da Rep. Car­los A. Gimenez de­cried the four killings and ac­cused the Cuban gov­ern­ment of mur­der.

“This regime must be rel­e­gat­ed to the dust bin of his­to­ry!” he wrote on X.

It’s not un­usu­al for skir­mish­es to erupt be­tween Cu­ba’s Coast Guard and U.S.-flagged speed­boats in Cuban wa­ters, but there have been no re­cent re­ports of pas­sen­gers open­ing fire or be­ing killed.

In past years, some of those U.S.-flagged boats were laden with uniden­ti­fied items head­ed to­ward the is­land or they were go­ing to pick up Cubans and smug­gle them in­to the U.S.

Of­fi­cials with the U.S. Coast Guard, the De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the White House did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to re­quests for com­ment. The Pen­ta­gon de­clined com­ment and di­rect­ed ques­tions to the U.S. De­part­ment of State, which did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a mes­sage seek­ing com­ment.

The in­ci­dent comes as ten­sions sim­mer be­tween the U.S. and Cu­ba in the wake of mount­ing pres­sure by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. The two coun­tries used to col­lab­o­rate on drug smug­gling and oth­er crimes but have since stopped do­ing so.