HAVANA \u2014 Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters late Wednesday that he was made aware of the incident with Cuban soldiers and that the U.S. is now gathering its own information to determine if the victims were American citizens or permanent residents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have various different elements of the U.S. government that are trying to identify elements of the story that may not be provided to us now,\u201d Rubio said while at the airport in Basseterre, St. Kitts.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s top diplomat refused to speculate on what happened, saying that its could be a \u201cwide range of things,\u201d and that the U.S. will not solely rely on what the Cuban authorities have provided thus far.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuffice it to say, it is highly unusual to see shootouts in open sea like that. It\u2019s not something that happens every day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP\u2019s earlier story follows below.<\/p>\n
HAVANA \u2014 Cuban soldiers killed four people and wounded six others aboard a Florida-registered speed boat that had entered Cuban waters and opened fire first on soldiers, the Cuban government said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Cuba\u2019s 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\u2019s north coast.<\/p>\n
It was unclear if any U.S. citizens were aboard.<\/p>\n
The government provided the boat\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Officials said one Cuban officer was injured, four suspects killed and six others injured.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t immediately known what the boat and its occupants were doing in Cuban waters. In the statement, the ministry said Cuba\u2019s government was \u201csafeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
U.S. Vice President JD Vance said late Wednesday afternoon that he had been briefed on the incident by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He added that the White House was monitoring the situation, but declined to provide further details.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully it\u2019s not as bad as we fear it could be,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n
James Uthmeier, Florida\u2019s attorney general, said he has ordered prosecutors to work with federal, state and law enforcement partners to start an investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Cuban government cannot be trusted, and we will do everything in our power to hold these communists accountable,\u201d he wrote on X.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Florida Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez decried the four killings and accused the Cuban government of murder.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis regime must be relegated to the dust bin of history!\u201d he wrote on X.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not unusual for skirmishes to erupt between Cuba\u2019s Coast Guard and U.S.-flagged speedboats in Cuban waters, but there have been no recent reports of passengers opening fire or being killed.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HAVANA \u2014 Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters late Wednesday that he was made aware of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[556,28,30,29,4115,122],"class_list":["post-169302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-ap-a-wire","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-top-ap-news","tag-wires-bot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}