Two Cubans in a boatload of people being smuggled to the US drowned last week when their craft capsized off the island's coast, authorities said on Thursday. Nine other passengers and two smugglers managed to swim to shore.
A note from Cuba's Interior Ministry, read on state television, was Cuba's first official confirmation of the accident off the northern coast of Havana province.
The go-fast boat was carrying 13 people when its motor failed, the note said. The craft then hit a reef and overturned, killing two of the passengers. Authorities believe the two smugglers are hiding in Cuban territory.
Twenty-six people were being held in police custody, including the nine surviving passengers. The rest of those held appeared to be would-be migrants who were turned away from the boat for lack of room.
Earlier on Thursday, the US Coast Guard in Miami said it had received via the US Interests Section in Havana -- the US mission here -- a report from the Cuban Coast Guard about the accident that said two adults had died and 11 people were unharmed.
US Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Chris O'Neil, public affairs officer for the district in Miami, on Thursday criticized South Florida migrant smuggling operations and what he said was "the tacit or direct protection of the local community."
As long as "people are content to see the lives of their loved ones needlessly endangered by the reckless, negligent and criminal actions of migrant smugglers, migrant smuggling and the human tragedy associated with it will continue in the Florida Straits," O'Neil said in a statement.
The smugglers typically charge relatives up to US$8,000 a head to smuggle their loved ones into the US and often crowd the migrants into boats to make more money.
The Cuban Interior Ministry report identified the dead as Yosvani Vera, a 29-year-old man, and Zuleika Rodriguez, a 43-year-old woman.
"The investigation is continuing into this lamentable accident, which is rooted in the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act that stimulates illegal migration, and the lucrative activities of the mafia," the Interior Ministry said.
Washington's so-called "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy, which springs from the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, generally allows Cubans who reach US soil to stay in the country while most Cubans the US Coast Guard picks up at sea are repatriated.
Havana says the policy encourages Cubans to undertake the risky sea voyage.
The US Coast Guard said it had interdicted 3,197 Cuban migrants this year, compared to 2,293 last year.
The Interior Ministry note did not mention another possible tragedy involving Cuban migrants.
The US Coast Guard said it was notified by family members on Dec. 6 that up to 40 Cubans had not been heard from since departing Cuba aboard a migrant-smuggling boat on Nov. 24.
Separately, police detained 21 Cuban migrants who said they had arrived on Honduras' Caribbean coast in a homemade boat.
The 16 men and 5 women were detained on Wednesday in the town of El Porvenir, Honduras' General Office of Criminal Investigation reported.
The migrants said they left Cuba two weeks ago aboard a boat they had constructed themselves and headed toward Honduras, where some of them have relatives.
The Cubans were turned over to Honduran immigration authorities.
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