Cuba accused the men of opening fire on its military.

17:29, Fri, Feb 27, 2026 Updated: 17:53, Fri, Feb 27, 2026

Cuba has named the four men involved

Cuba has named the four men involved (Image: Getty)

Cuba has named the four men who were shot dead by its military as the authorities in Havana accused them of plotting an attempted coup.

Those killed in what the Cuban government said was a coup were named as Pavel Alling Pena, Michel Ortega Casanova, Ledian Padron Guevara, and Hector Duani Cruz Correa. The Cuban government also said the majority of the 10 people on the boat “have a known history of criminal and violent activity.”

The six injured were named as Cristian Ernesto Acosta Guevara, Conrado Galindo Sariol, Jose Manuel Rodriguez Castello, Leordan Enrique Cruz Gomez, Amijail Sanchez Gonzalez, and Roberto Alvarez Avila.

The Cuban Ministry of the Interior said the people aboard the boat Wednesday were Cubans living in the U.S. and accused them of trying to infiltrate the country to engage in terrorism. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was not a U.S. government operation, the Associated Press reported.

Rubio also said the American government was gathering its own information, including whether the people were U.S. citizens or permanent residents, AP added. The agency also added the government said one of the four killed was Michel Ortega Casanova whose brother Misael Ortega Casanova told The Associated Press that his sibling had developed an “obsessive and diabolical” quest for Cuba’s freedom given the suffering they endured on the island before moving to the U.S. He said his brother was an American citizen who lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years.

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These updates come hours after Cuba's Interior Ministry (MININT) confirmed a US speedboat with a Florida registration number was detected within one nautical mile of the El Pino Channel on the island of Cayo Falcones.

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On Wednesday, February 25, a confrontation started, according to the official statement, when the "violating" vessels fired at the Cuban border guards, injuring the commander, after a unit of the Border Guard Troops approached the boat to identify it. In its statement, MININT claimed that the "offending boat opened fire against the Cuban personnel, causing the commander of Cuban vessel to be injured.

As a result of the confrontation, at the time of this report, on the foreign side, four aggressors were killed and six were injured, who were evacuated and received medical assistance". A US official said the firefight involved a US civilian boat that was part of flotilla to get relatives out of Cuba, adding that the vessel was not US Naval or Coast Guard boat, the New York Times later reported.