Tiroteo en aeropuerto habanero
Un fuerte tiroteo se produjo esta mañana en el aeropuerto de La Habana entre la policía cubana y tres soldados que aparentemente intentaron secuestrar un avión, con la presunta intención de fugarse al extranjero, dijo a la agencia francesa AFP una fuente de la terminal aérea. Hasta el momento no hay confirmación oficial disponible, pero una funcionaria del aeropuerto internacional José Martí, que no quiso identificarse y no ofreció mayores detalles, afirmó a la AFP que todo estaba normalizado. La agencia española EFE reporta, por lo menos, un fallecido. "Ya todo está controlado, pero hubo un fuerte tiroteo, entraron en una guagua (autobús) de la calle, cerca del límite del aeropuerto pegado a la terminal 2, y atravesaron hasta el avión, un Boeing 737, que estaba en posición en la 1", dijo a la AFP una fuente del terminal aéreo. Los reclutas, tres jóvenes del servicio activo que se fugaron el sábado de una unidad militar en la localidad de Managua, 15 millas al sudeste de La Habana, fueron neutralizados por la policía, según el empleado del aeropuerto. Los hechos ocurrieron en la madrugada de este jueves cuando los conscriptos trataron de secuestrar el avión que había llegado de la ciudad de Santiago de Cuba, en el oriente de la isla, y tomaron algunos rehenes. "El avión llegaba de Santiago y por dicha ya habían bajado todos los pasajeros. Sólo quedaban los técnicos (tripulación), que se tiraron por la escotilla de adelante. Pensaban (los secuestradores) salir del país", añadió. Desde el fin de semana en La Habana se comentada de la fuga de los reclutas y surgieron las versiones de una incremento de la seguridad en las vías de acceso a la ciudad. El último suceso de este tipo en Cuba ocurrió en abril de 2003, cuando un avión AN-24 de fabricación soviética con 31 personas a bordo fue secuestrado por un hombre armado con granadas de mano que fue detenido sin incidentes al aterrizar en Cayo Hueso (Florida). El gobierno no ha confirmado ni desmentido el incidente.
HAVANA (AFP) - A fierce gun battle broke out at Havana's Jose Marti airport Thursday between police and three fugitive soldiers attempting to commandeer an airplane to leave the country, an airport source told AFP.
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"Now everything everything is under control, but there was a fierce gunfight," the source said, saying the men were riding a bus toward a Boeing 737 at the Terminal 1 when the shooting took place.
There was no official government confirmation of the incident or information on casualties, but an airport official who would not be identified told AFP that everything was normal at the airport.
The three men, young conscripts who fled their military unit Saturday near Managua southeast of Havana, were "neutralized" by the police, according to an airport worker.
The incident took place early Thursday when the men seized several hostages in seeking to take over an aircraft which had arrived from Santiago de Cuba at the east end of the island.
"The plane had arrived from Santiago and fortunately all the passengers had already gotten off. Only the crew were left, who then escaped through the front hatch. They were thinking the kidnappers wanted to leave the country."
Since the weekend Havana has been abuzz with talk of the three soldiers and security was tightened on roads into the capital.
In 2003 a Russia AN-24 with 31 people aboard was taken over and forced to fly to the United States by a man armed with grenades, who was ultimately detained without incident after the plan landed in Key West, Florida.
Shootout reported at Havana airport
A fierce shootout at or near Havana's international airport was reported Thursday morning, according to a human rights activist on the island.
The gunfight apparently involved some of the three soldiers who had deserted a nearby military base last week and may have been trying to hijack a plane out of Cuba, Elizardo Sánchez told The Miami Herald in a phone interview from Havana.
''The airport is under heavy security,'' Sánchez said.
The incident was not immediately reported in official media, but other news outlets based in Havana reported that the shooting occurred in the early morning hours following an attempted hijacking by three armed men believed to have been draftees from the military base in Managua, just a few miles from Havana's José Martí International Airport.
A massive police operation has been under way since the three deserted and security at the airport was fortified. Access to the airport on Thursday was limited. The area was blocked off for miles, Sánchez said.
Unconfirmed media reports from Havana said the armed men entered the airport on a bus and tried to block a plane that had just landed in an apparent attempt to hijack it.
The shooting follows another violent incident involving conscripts on Dec. 20 at the El Manguito prison, just outside Santiago de Cuba. Three conscripts allegedly opened fire on their superior officers and broke away from their posts. They were eventually captured.
If these 3 fugitives were on the loose since the weekend, and the entire community was waiting for something to happen.........
That would explain why that coward Fidel didn't show up at the parade.
Something tells me that this is just the start of more incidents to come.
Tres desertores del servicio militar intentaron secuestrar la madrugada de este jueves un Boeing 737 para abandonar la Isla al parecer rumbo a Estados Unidos, lo que provocó un enfrentamiento a tiros en el aeropuerto con la Policía, que controló la situación, revelaron varias fuentes a la AFP.
Hasta las 13H00 locales (16H00 GMT) no se disponía de ninguna confirmación oficial, pero empleados del aeropuerto hablaban de al menos un muerto. Una de las fuentes aseveró que las víctimas mortales eran dos, uno ellos al parecer uno de los presuntos secuestradores.
Según informó ANSA, el incidente al parecer causó dos muertos. Fuentes del aeropuerto citadas por la agencia dijeron que en el episodio murió uno de los atacantes y un teniente coronel no identificado, que intentó repeler el ataque. La versión no ha sido confirmada por las autoridades.
El diario español El Mundo, citando a la agencia de noticias DPA, reportó también que fuentes del aeropuerto revelaron que ha habido dos muertos, un recluta y un oficial, a consecuencia del altercado.
Reuters informó que una circular de la Contrainteligencia Militar de las FAR a la que tuvo acceso, identifica a los reclutas como Alain Forbus, de 19 años; Yoan Torres, de 21; y Leandro Cerezo, de 19.
"Sujetos peligrosos con tenencia de armas de fuego", señala el comunicado, que incluye fotografías de los tres y fue distribuido entre funcionarios, trabajadores y organizaciones de vecinos en La Habana.
Los tres son de la provincia de Camagüey y estaban destinados en la unidad militar de Managua.
Los hechos ocurrieron a las 04H00 locales (08H00 GMT) de este jueves cuando los conscriptos, armados con AK-47 y 700 cartuchos, intentaron secuestrar un avión Boeing 737 de la terminal 2, donde salen los vuelos especiales para las ciudades estadounidense de Miami y Nueva York.
Los reclutas ingresaron en un autobús, con algunos rehenes, por una cerca que establece el límite entre la terminal 1, donde operan los vuelos nacionales, según los informes extraoficiales.
"Ya todo está controlado, pero hubo un fuerte tiroteo, entraron en una guagua (autobús) de la calle, cerca del límite del aeropuerto pegado a la Terminal 2, y atravesaron hasta el avión, un Boeing 737, que estaba en posición en la Terminal 1", precisó a la AFP un empleado del aeropuerto.
El avión había llegado de la ciudad de Santiago de Cuba. "Ya habían bajado todos los pasajeros. Sólo quedaban los técnicos (tripulación), que se tiraron por la escotilla de adelante. Pensaban (los secuestradores) salir del país", añadió.
El tiroteo comenzó desde que el autobús atravesó la cerca, donde, según constató la AFP, hay varios impactos en una fibra color verde que la recubre y que fueron marcados con números.
"No estamos autorizados para hablar de eso", dijo a la AFP uno de tres miembros de las unidades especiales de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (FAR) que realizaban reparaciones en la cerca y el portón.
Los reclutas, tres jóvenes del servicio militar que se fugaron el sábado de una unidad militar en la localidad de Managua, 25 kilómetros al sudeste de La Habana, fueron neutralizados por la Policía, según diversas fuentes.
La Terminal aérea 1, donde operan la mayoría de las oficinas centrales del aeropuerto, estaba hacia el mediodía sin operar, por lo que estaban siendo desviados hacia la Terminal 5, constató un periodista de la AFP.
Desde el fin de semana en La Habana se comentaba la fuga de los reclutas y surgieron las versiones de una incremento de la seguridad en las vías de acceso a la ciudad.
Las fotografías de los tres fugados fueron colocadas en varios puntos de La Habana, y distribuidas a centros públicos, como supermercados, ferreterías y otros negocios.
El último suceso de este tipo en Cuba ocurrió en abril de 2003, cuando un avión AN-24 de fabricación soviética con 31 personas a bordo fue secuestrado por un hombre armado con granadas de mano que fue detenido sin incidentes al aterrizar en Cayo Hueso (Florida, EE UU).
gray Wrote:Other links are here
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3...57FECD.htm
&
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/ameri..._1st_Lead_
BBC has it now
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6621793.stm
Fugitive army recruits attempt to hijack plane in Havana, kill one hostage
Ray Sanchez, Havana Bureau, and Associated Press reports
Sun-Sentinel.com
Posted May 3 2007, 7:05 PM EDT
Fugitive Cuban army recruits tried to hijack a plane to the United States and killed a military officer they took hostage in the failed attempt at Jose Marti International Airport early Thursday, the Interior Ministry of Cuba said.
Two of the escaped recruits were arrested after Army Lt. Col. Victor Ibo Acuna Velazquez was killed in the aborted hijack that began about midnight when they commandeered a city bus carrying several passengers to get to a plane on the tarmac near Terminal 1, said a ministry statement.
LocalLinks
Between 1 and 4 a.m., the hijackers fired shots outside the window of the plane, according to witnesses who live near the airport located in Havana.
Leonol Coca, 54, who lives in a house outside airport gates, said she could hear the mother of one hijacker pleading for her son over a loudspeaker to surrender. "I could hear the mother screaming, 'Joandri, Joandri! It's your mother. Please give yourself up. Your little brothers are here. Please come to us.'"
Another nearby resident, Jorge Cora, 29, also heard the mother speaking. "She said, 'My son, life is too short. Your family is here. Please give yourself up.'"
At about 4 a.m., Coca and other witnesses said they saw the sky light up with gunfire. "It was like war. We've never seen anything like this before."
The Cuban government and its official media have not confirmed that shots were fired.
Rafael Valdez, 76, a parking attendant at the airport, said he saw police escorting one of the hijackers away from the scene. "He had his head down. People were yelling, cursing at him. He didn't say a word. He never looked up," Valdez said. "He looked very young like a little boy. He must have lost his mind to do this."
There had been a massive manhunt under way for three army recruits sought after fleeing their base. The two arrested were among three army recruits who escaped from their military base on Sunday after killing a fellow soldier and wounding another. The third was captured earlier, the ministry statement said.
The Defense Ministry over the weekend distributed wanted circulars around Havana, describing the fugitive recruits as armed and dangerous and saying they were sought for abandoning their posts. Some circulars were displayed in public places, including post offices. The men, all from the eastern province of Camaguey, were identified as Leandro Cerezo Sirut and Alain Forbus Lameru, both 19, and Yoan Torres Martinez, 21.
Here they are............
Wonder how many Cubans Castro killed when He assaulted the Moncada barracks.
Thanks for flushing out the story, Buena.
Especially the photo!
Cuban airport shootout may mark new efforts to flee
May 4, 2007 Em
By Theresa Bradley
MIAMI, USA (Bloomberg): Cuban-American groups in Miami said a deadly gun fight between Cuban police and three military deserters attempting to hijack an airplane may mark a new round of violent efforts to flee the Communist island.
"This is a very clear reflection of the frustration and desperation in Cuba at all levels," said Camila Gallardo, director of government relations for the Cuban-American National Foundation, the largest Cuban-American lobby.
Police on Thursday fired on three recruits who had deserted their military unit southeast of Havana last weekend, commandeering a passenger bus they rode into Havana's Jose Marti airport in an attempt to take over a Boeing 737 that had just arrived from the island's eastern city, Santiago de Cuba, Agence France-Presse reported. At least one security officer was killed.
The incident reflects growing discontent on the island as the transition to a post-Fidel Castro government portends less change than many had expected, activists and researchers said.
Castro, 80, has been sidelined by intestinal surgery and complications since July 30, when he temporarily turned state control over to his brother Raul Castro.
"This isn't three young kids who decided to get in an inner tube and float to Key West; they're the rank and file of the Cuban army," said Jorge Pinon, a senior researcher at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, which debriefs scores of newly arrived migrants every year.
"It's an indication that, if there's any kind of popular revolt in the future and Raul Castro calls on the army to stop it, we don't think they'll shoot," Pinon said. "It shows you the depth of discontent within Cuba's young population."
Cuba's government blamed the US for the attempted hijacking and said it had arrested the three recruits, according to a statement obtained on the island by the Spanish newswire Efe.
More than 20 percent of Cuba's 11.4 million people were born after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ushering in a period of hardship as aid and subsidies to the former satellite nation were cut, boosting emigration and complicating Castro's ongoing "revolution."
At least a third of the nearly 1 million Cubans who've left the island for the US since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 did so after 1990, a Pew study of US Census data showed, not including more than two dozen migrants who arrived by boat this week on Miami's Key Biscayne.
Cuban emigrants on occasion commandeered planes to escape the island during the 1970s and 1980s, although the frequency of such hijackings declined when Castro's government stepped up security measures in the 1990s, Gallardo said.
The most recent hijacking was a domestic commercial flight taken over and directed to land in Key West, Florida, in 2003.
That same year, Cuban officials executed three men for hijacking a ferry boat in an attempt to flee to the US.
Pinon predicted the three military recruits, whom sources in Cuba on Thursday told him were 19 and 20 year-old men from the agricultural province Camaguay, could soon likely face a similar fate, as Cuba's transitional leadership moves to send a message to stop any pickup in emigration.
"People want a change to happen in Cuba, and since the transfer to Raul Castro they haven't seen that -- it's more of the same," Gallardo of the Cuban-American National Foundation said. "There's going to be an intensification of these kinds of events as people lose their fear and frustration culminates."
Military thwarts hijacking attempt from Cuba to U.S.
Armed with assault rifles, Cuban army deserters tried to hijack a plane in Havana's airport, killing an army officer before being captured after a gun battle.
BY NANCY SAN MARTIN
nsanmartin@MiamiHerald.com
A Cuban military officer and a soldier were killed in an unusual spree of violence that began when three draftees deserted their base and then tried to hijack a plane to the United States, the Cuban Interior Ministry said Thursday.
Two of the deserters, who were captured, killed an army lieutenant colonel they took hostage in Thursday's failed hijack attempt at Havana's José Martí International Airport, the ministry said in a statement.
They and a third conscript, captured sometime earlier, had killed a soldier and wounded another when they deserted Sunday from their military base and made off with two AK-47 assault rifles, the statement added.
Residents around the airport reported an intense gun battle around 4 a.m., but the statement made no mention of any such exchange of gunfire.
The incidents were the first confirmed outbreak of violence within the military since Fidel Castro fell ill in July and ceded power to his brother, Defense Minister Raúl Castro.
In December, three draftees allegedly opened fire during an uprising at a prison near the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba and killed two superior officers, but the government has not confirmed that.
Still, U.S. experts on the Cuban military said they doubt the outbreaks point to any political cracks within the island's security forces.
The Interior Ministry statement said the two conscripts captured at the airport had hijacked a bus with several passengers -- apparently including the lieutenant colonel -- guided it to the airport and entered a plane that had no crew or passengers.
''Once inside the airplane, the murderers killed one of the hostages, Revolutionary Armed Forces Lt. Col. Víctor Ibo Acuña Velásquez, who even though he was not armed, tried heroically to avert this terrorist act,'' it said.
The statement added that the ''effective and coordinated action of the security forces allowed the frustration of the aims of the kidnappers and the preservation of the lives of the other hostages.'' It did not specify whether anyone else was injured in the attempted hijacking.
Havana blamed the events on U.S. policies that it said encourage illegal Cuban migration.
''The responsibility for these new crimes lies with the highest-ranking authorities of the United States, adding to the long list of terrorist acts that Cuba has been the victim of for nearly half a century,'' the statement said.
Human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez said in telephone calls from Havana that he had reports that relatives of the two conscripts played a role in their capture. It was not clear what role the relatives played.
Sánchez and media reports from Havana said the three conscripts had deserted from the Managua military base, some 15 miles southeast of the airport, which houses an elite armored unit and serves as a training facility.
Military counterintelligence officers had been distributing ''wanted'' leaflets showing photos of the three and identifying them as Alain Forbus Lameru, 19; Yoan Torres Martínez, 21, and Leandro Cerezo Sirut, 19, all from eastern Camagüey province. The leaflets said they were armed and dangerous.
Witnesses shown on Miami television said at least two of the AWOL soldiers, armed with AK-47s, hijacked the A-9 bus from Santiago de las Vegas, near Managua, to the neighborhood of El Cotorro, near the airport, and used it to ram through an airport gate and onto the tarmac.
The bus drove right up to a commercial plane parked on the tarmac and the men went in, demanding to leave the island, the witnesses said. They added that Cuban military personnel fired tear gas into the plane and a gun battle ensued.
''We heard a lot of shooting,'' one resident of the Rancho Boyeros neighborhood near the airport told El Nuevo Herald by telephone Thursday morning. ``We are all very nervous.''
The Interior Ministry statement made no direct mention of any operation to stop the hijacking, any shootout or use of tear gas. There were no confirmed reports of other injuries during the attempted hijacking.
Progreso Weekly, a Miami-based website sympathetic to Havana, reported the hijackers shot Acuña in the pilot's cabin. Security forces then rushed in and rescued the hostages amid a gun battle. Some hostages and one of the hijackers were wounded, it added, giving no sources for the information.
The three captured deserters will likely face the death penalty, news reports said.
Media reports from Havana identified the airplane as a Boeing 737 operated by the Spanish Hola Airlines.
Passengers arriving in Miami on a flight from Havana Thursday afternoon said security at José Martí Airport was tight but that they saw no other signs of the bloody event.
''There was much more security than normal. It was clear that they had had a problem, but they didn't say anything,'' said Caridad, an older woman who declined to give her last name. ``They wouldn't let people who were not traveling into the airport.''
On Dec. 20, three conscripts working as guards at the El Manguito prison just outside Santiago reportedly opened fire on their superior officers during a prison escape attempt, killing two officials. They were captured later.
Despite the similarities between the December incident and this week's, experts on the Cuban armed forces said they believe the events seem isolated and do not indicate a problem within the island's security forces.
''This does not demonstrate or show a pattern of discontent,'' said Frank Mora, a professor at the National War College in Washington who studies the Cuban military. ``It does not demonstrate a political problem or break in the military institution.''
Conscripts are required to serve at least two years.
''Usually, those who are doing this are not people of certain means or political influence,'' Mora said.
Conscripts, estimated at least 65,000, are usually involved in an array of duties -- from agricultural work to security.
They earn a small monthly stipend and are provided with housing and food.
Miami Herald staff writers Luisa Yáñez and Casey Woods and El Nuevo Herald staff writer Wilfredo Cancio Isla contributed to this report.