AFP
At least 14 people were detained after protesters stormed a provincial office of the Cuban Communist Party over the weekend, a local official said Monday, a rare outburst of discontent as economic conditions worsen on the island.
The state-run newspaper Invasor had originally said five people were arrested in what it called an incident of vandalism in the town of Moron, around 500 kilometers (300 miles) east of Havana.
But on Monday the regional party chief Julio Heriberto Gomez told the paper that 14 people had been arrested after the unrest, which saw rocks thrown at the office and furniture seized and set on fire.
“Once again they used a group of delinquents who do not represent the people of Moron,” Gomez alleged, without further detail.
Cuba’s 9.6 million people have faced food and medicine shortages along with increased power outages in recent months as US President Donald Trump steps up his pressure campaign against the island’s communist authorities.
After the incident, President Miguel Diaz-Canel acknowledged in an X post “the discontent our people feel because of the prolonged blackouts” while warning that violence would “never be comprehensible, justified or admitted.”
Trump for his part vowed Monday to “take” Cuba as the communist island plunged into darkness in the latest power blackout linked to a crippling US oil embargo.
“Whether I free it, take it — think I could do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth. They’re a very weakened nation right now.”
AFP
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