Two loud explosions Monday shook the surroundings of La Pua, a small town in Holguin in eastern Cuba. The explosions seemed to have gone off at a military base in the area, several local sources told el Nuevo Herald.
The cause of the explosions is unknown, and the government has not commented on the events. According to residents of Velasco, a town near La Pua, 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 Jose Avila 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 Holguin military hospital,” the nurse said.
Several Velasco residents, who asked not to be named for fear of government retaliation, told el Nuevo Herald that the explosions occurred 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 Pua 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 Pua say that the smell of gunpowder in that whole area is unbearable,” one of the Velasco residents told el Nuevo Herald.
Images published on Facebook by the journalist Hanoi Martinez, the first to report on the events, show people watching two columns of smoke going up in the sky. According to Martinez, 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,” Martinez said on Facebook.
As of Monday evening Cuban state media had not 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.”
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