Two boats filled with humanitarian supplies travelling from Mexico to Cuba have been located days after contact with them was lost in the Caribbean, organisers say.
The boats were located by the Mexican Navy and the crews are safe, a spokesman for the Nuestra America Convoy said.
He did not explain why the two boats – the Friendship and Tiger Moth – had disappeared.
They are among several vessels that have sought to carry supplies to the island nation since the US imposed an oil blockade in January, prompting a chronic fuel shortage.
The Mexican Navy has not commented on how it located the boats, which departed Isla Mujeres, in Mexico’s easternmost state of Quintana Roo, on 20 March, and had been due to arrive at their destination on Monday or Tuesday.
There are nine crew members – from Poland, France, Cuba and the US – on board.
“The vessels are continuing their journey to [the Cuban capital] Havana,” the Nuestra America Convoy spokesman said.
“The convoy remains on track to complete its mission – delivering urgently needed humanitarian aid to the Cuban people,” he added.
Volunteers and non-governmental organisations have largely spearheaded efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to Cuba since US President Donald Trump’s oil embargo on the communist-run country began.
The UN has warned Cuba faces “dire” supply shortages, with more than 50,000 surgeries cancelled in Cuba as fuel supply constraints and ageing infrastructure have caused multiple nationwide blackouts.
Coupled with shortages of food and medicine, the situation has triggered rare public dissent in the form of street protests.
Earlier in the week, the Cuban government celebrated and warmly received another boat that had carried 14 tonnes of humanitarian aid to the island.
The vessel, dubbed “Granma 2.0” after the boat in which [late Communist leader] Fidel Castro returned to Cuba to launch its 1950s revolution, delivered solar panels, medicines, baby formula, bicycles and food.
Since the US seized former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January and cut off the supply of oil from Venezuela – a staunch Cuban regional ally, Trump has turned his attention to the Caribbean island.
He has threatened tariffs on any country supplying oil to Cuba, has spoken of a “friendly takeover” of the nation and has urged it to “make a deal” or face unspecified consequences.
The Cuban government has confirmed it is in talks with the US to resolve their differences, but has insisted that “the political system of Cuba is not up for negotiation”.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the system in Cuba had to change if it wanted a better future.
“You need to change the people in charge, you need to change the system that runs the country, and you need to change the economic model that it’s following,” Rubio told reporters in France, where he attended a meeting of foreign ministers from the most advanced Western economies, known as the G7.
The US secretary of state denied there was a naval blockade around the island.
“The reason why Cuba doesn’t have oil and fuel is because they want it for free,” Rubio said, “and people don’t give away oil and fuel for free on a regular basis, unless it was the Soviet Union subsidising them or Maduro subsidising them”.
“And the reason why they’re having blackouts is because they have equipment from the 1950s and ’60s that they never maintained or kept up,” he told reporters before leaving Paris.
By BBC News
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