Cuba says troops killed 4 after an armed speedboat opened fire near the island

MIAMI (AP) — Word from the Cuban government of a deadly encounter between its troops and a boat carrying armed expatriates is casting a spotlight on Cubans living in the U.S. who still harbor aspirations of a counter-revolution 67 years after a guerrilla uprising ushered in communism.

Cuban soldiers confronted a speedboat carrying 10 people as the vessel approached the island and opened fire on the troops, who fired back, killing four and wounding six, Cuba’s government says.

One of the four killed was Michel Ortega Casanova – a man on an “obsessive and diabolical” quest for Cuba’s freedom from current circumstances, according to his brother in Miami.

Misael Ortega Casanova said that his brother Michel is an American citizen who has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years and still agonizes over the suffering that Cubans endure.

“They became so obsessed that they didn’t think about the consequences nor their own lives,” Misael said of passions harbored by his brother.

At the same time, Misael said that he did not recognize any of the names that the Cuban government released in connection with the boat incursion and that the shootings had caught his family by surprise.

“No one knew,” Misael said of his brother’s plans. “My mother is devastated.”

He said that while he doesn’t believe in heroes — “because that is ignorance” — he hopes that his brother’s death might be a worthwhile sacrifice.

“Maybe it will justify that some day Cuba will be free.”

Cuban authorities, meanwhile, say Michel Ortega Casanova was accompanied on the boat by two men who are wanted “based on their involvement in the promotion, planning, organization, financing, support or commission” of terrorism, speaking of Amijail Sánchez González and Leordan Enrique Cruz Gómez.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was wary of initial reports by Cuba and asserted that the U.S. would gather its own information about the people involved. His words also evoked a seemingly dormant history of subterfuge and armed provocations between the U.S. and Cuba.

“It is highly unusual to see shootouts in open sea like that,” Rubio said. “It’s something that hasn’t happened with Cuba in a very long time.”

Conrado Galindo Sariol, another passenger, was identified as a former political prisoner in a 2025 interview with Martí Noticias, a U.S.-based news site that has long called for a change of government in Cuba.

The Cuban government said the watercraft was a Florida-registered speedboat, and officials who searched it found assault rifles, handguns, homemade explosives, bulletproof vests, telescopic sights and camouflage uniforms.

The shooting took place amid heightened tensions between the two countries as President Donald Trump’s administration tightens the U.S. embargo and threatens tariffs against countries providing Cuba with oil.

Crucial oil shipments to Cuba from Venezuela were halted when the U.S. arrested Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a Jan. 3 stealth nighttime raid by U.S. military forces.

Guns and boats of mysterious provenance are hallmarks of both the guerrilla landing that spawned Cuba’s 1959 revolution, the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion by CIA-trained exiles in an attempt to topple its leader, Fidel Castro, and assorted skirmishes since then.

Emilio Izquierdo, a prominent exile in Miami who spent two years jailed in Cuba before arriving in the U.S. in 1980, cast doubt on Cuba’s initial reports of an armed incursion.

He said that it was far more believable that foreign agents might have infiltrated Miami’s massive Cuban exile community and tricked government opponents into risking their lives on a suicide mission to overthrow the communist government in Havana.

“This is an invention of the G2,” he said, referring to Cuba’s notorious spy agency. “Nobody with a 25-foot speedboat tries to overthrow a government.”

The timing of the incident — with tensions between the U.S. and Cuba running at their highest in decades — was similarly suspicious, he said.