{"id":219957,"date":"2026-01-06T17:25:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T17:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/219957\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T17:25:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T17:25:13","slug":"havana-says-32-cubans-were-killed-in-us-operation-in-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/219957\/","title":{"rendered":"Havana says 32 Cubans were killed in US operation in Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

An American military operation in Venezuela killed 32 Cuban officers over the weekend, the Cuban government said Sunday in the first official death count provided of the American strikes in the South American nation.<\/p>\n

The Cuban military and police officers were on a mission at the request of Venezuela\u2019s government, according to a statement read on Cuban state TV on Sunday night.<\/p>\n

What the Cubans were working on in the South American nation was unclear, but Cuba is a close ally of Venezuela\u2019s government and has sent military and police forces to assist in operations for years. Rumours of the deaths circulated on the island over the weekend.<\/p>\n

“You know, a lot of Cubans were killed yesterday,” US President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew Sunday night from Florida back to Washington. \u201cThere was a lot of death on the other side. No death on our side.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US operation Saturday seized Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> and his wife to face prosecution on an indictment accusing them of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.<\/p>\n

While Venezuela’s government has acknowledged people died in the American blasts, they did not confirm how many were killed to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

Cuba\u2019s government announced two days of mourning for the Cuban officers who were killed, and former president and revolutionary leader Ra\u00fal Castro and President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel sent condolences to their families. The names of the dead and the positions they held were not immediately disclosed by Cuban authorities.<\/p>\n

The operation has raised serious questions, including whether it breached international law. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

\u201cFaithful to their responsibilities for security and defence, our compatriots fulfilled their duty with dignity and heroism and fell after fierce resistance in direct combat against the attackers or as a result of the bombings of the facilities,\u201d the official statement said.<\/p>\n

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/a>, the son of Cuban immigrants, also pointed to Cuban involvement in Venezuela over the weekend, saying that Maduro’s internal security apparatus was headed by Cubans and that they were “propping up Maduro”.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the guards that help protect Maduro \u2014 this is well known \u2014 their whole spy agency, all that were full of Cubans,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An American military operation in Venezuela killed 32 Cuban officers over the weekend, the Cuban government said Sunday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[28708,65,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-219957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-central-south-america","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}