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Two sailing boats that went missing while carrying humanitarian aid to Cuba have safely reached the Caribbean island, the US Coast Guard said on Friday.
Earlier in the day Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, had said his country would do everything it could to save the people on the two boats that disappeared while travelling to Cuba from Mexico.
The boats, which set sail from the Mexican state of Quintana Roo last Friday as part of an international aid mission, had been expected to arrive in Havana by Tuesday or Wednesday, the Mexican secretariat of the navy said in a statement.
But the alarm was raised after the vessels – which were part of the Our America convoy – failed to reach their destination. The Mexican newspaper El Universal said the country’s authorities were in contact with representatives of Poland, France, Cuba and the US, “the home countries of the people onboard”.
On Friday, Díaz-Canel voiced “deep concern” over the fate of the nine people thought to have been on the boats. “We are doing everything possible to search for and save these brothers in arms,” he wrote on X.
A spokesperson for the convoy told AFP: “Mexican authorities have activated their search-and-rescue protocol for two sailboats en route to Havana as part of the convoy, which have not yet arrived.”
“The captains and crews are experienced sailors, and both vessels are equipped with appropriate safety systems and signalling equipment,” they added.
Later on Friday the US Coast Guard, which was not involved in search efforts, announced it had received a report at 10.36am (2.36pm GMT) that “the two vessels safely transited to Cuba”.
Cuba has been plunged into one of its worst crises since the 1959 revolution in recent months, thanks to a US oil blockade ordered by Donald Trump that has left millions of citizens in the dark.
Trump’s decision to abduct Nicolás Maduro, the president of Cuba’s key ally Venezuela, in January was a sucker punch to the island’s Communist party leaders. “We haven’t received a drop of fuel for nearly four months,” Díaz-Canel complained in an interview with the Mexican newspaper La Jornada that was published on Friday.
The convoy to Cuba was organised by the leftwing political organisation Progressive International in an attempt to deliver aid and shine a light on the Caribbean country’s plight. The mission reportedly involved activists from 30 different countries. Those who travelled to Havana by boat or plane included the former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Spain’s former deputy prime minister Pablo Iglesias and the Northern Irish rap trio Kneecap.
“The aim of the criminal blockade is clear: to starve the Cuban people into submission,” Corbyn wrote in Novara Media.
The aid convoy’s organisers said they had sought to bring “critical humanitarian aid”, including food and medicine, to Cuba’s people in the face of “the criminal US blockade”.
“There is no time to waste, as the Trump administration ramps up its assault on the island and its campaign to isolate its people,” they said on the eve of the convoy’s arrival.
