Old ammunition caused explosions in a a military facility, the Cuban army says
Two loud explosions shook the surroundings of La Púa, a small town in Holguín in eastern Cuba, on Monday, prompting the evacuation of more than a thousand residents. The explosions went off at a military base in the area, several local sources told el Nuevo Herald.
According to residents of Velasco, a town a few kilometers from La Púa, there are tunnels used to store weapons in the military facility.
“What happened is not known. The military we treated said that the tunnels where the weapons were stored caught fire, and they began to explode,” said a nurse from the José Ávila Serrano health clinic in Velasco, where 13 wounded military personnel received initial treatment.
“They had a lot of injuries, but none were serious. Most were transferred to the Holguín military hospital,” the nurse said.
On Monday night, the Cuban Ministry of the Armed Forces confirmed the explosions at a “highly protected area of the eastern army,” in Velasco, in a statement read on Cuban state television.
The army evacuated 1,245 people from La Púa, but there were “no human losses,” the ministry said.
According to the ministry statement, “old ammunitions were being sorted where the explosions happened,” and investigations are ongoing.
Several Velasco residents, who asked not to be named for fear of government retaliation, told el Nuevo Herald that the explosions occurred on Monday morning.
“About 9 in the morning, I was leaving the house when I felt a very powerful explosion,” one of the residents said. “The explosion was so intense that even the walls of the house shook, and I felt my metal door clinking. The electricity went out immediately, and all the neighbors went out to the street to see what was going on.”
Another resident said there was an earlier explosion “very early in the morning, around 6.”
“I always wake up early to go work in the fields. It was then that I felt a strong explosion. After that came a big roar around 9 in the morning, and since then, we have not stopped feeling explosions, but smaller,” he said.
Residents said ambulances, military vehicles and troops went to La Púa to cordon off the area and evacuate the town and others nearby.
“They haven’t said anything on the radio or television. The people of La Púa say that the smell of gunpowder in that whole area is unbearable,” one of the Velasco residents told el Nuevo Herald in the afternoon.
Images published on Facebook by the journalist Hanoi Martínez, the first to report on the events, show people watching two columns of smoke going up in the sky. According to Martínez, a native of Velasco who lives in the United States, the images were sent to him by local people.
“The base is surrounded by silos with all kinds of weapons, from rifles, ammunition, to weapons of war,” Martínez said on Facebook.
According to Luis Domínguez, a military expert and author of the blog Cuba al Descubierto, the base near La Púa is also known as “La Calera and is part of the military unit 3710.”
“It is a mountainous place, and there are tunnels where the government continues storing weapons despite satellite technologies such as Google Earth that allows obtaining information about their location easily,” Domínguez said.
As of Monday evening, the main Cuban state newspapers had not yet reported on the explosions.
“We are all very nervous. The two explosions were heard early, and now all we hear are ambulances passing by,” said another resident. “There is no information in official media.”
This story was originally published July 6, 2020 at 6:01 PM.