HAVANA: A rare tornado ripped through Havana late on Sunday, leaving at least four dead and nearly two hundred injured as it tore off roofs, flipped vehicles and reduced some of the buildings in its path to rubble.
The twister was the strongest to hit Cuba in nearly 80 years, according to Jose Rubiera, a meteorologist with the Cuban weather service. It pummeled its way 7.15 miles (11.5 km) through Havana over 16 minutes, at times reaching 0.62 miles (1 km) in diameter.
The streets of the worse-hit neighborhoods, mainly in eastern and central Havana, were strewn on Monday with shards of glass and debris as well as downed trees and power lines. Some areas lacked electricity and running water.
“The noise made it seem like a plane was crashing down on us,” said Victoria Infanta Rodriguez, 47, surveying the wreckage of her home. “But when you looked it was more like a big ball of flame — something red, red, red as if the whole country had caught fire.”
Infanta Rodriguez said her family had huddled in a corner of their home like Russian nesting dolls as the tornado sucked off the roof — she sheltered her 12-year-old son and her husband sheltered her, taking the brunt of the flying debris that scratched and bruised his back.
“All we have left is the skeleton of the house,” she said. Like many of her neighbors in the capital’s eastern, working-class borough of Regla, the tornado had smashed most her belongings while the rain had destroyed her appliances.
President Miguel Diaz-Canel toured Regla shortly after the tornado hit and tweeted a preliminary death toll of three, that the state-run news broadcaster updated to four in the evening, adding that 195 were injured.
One Regla resident, Odalys Diaz, 51, said her neighbor was killed when the roof of a nearby five-story building came crashing down onto his which then collapsed on top of him.
Concrete debris also smashed into her flat, tearing down the wall of one room and shattering the windows.
“There was glass flying everywhere. I tried to hide under the bed,” Diaz said.
The devastation wrought suggested it was an “EF4” tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale, the second most powerful category with winds up to 200 miles per hour (322 km per hour), Rubiera told state-run news agency Prensa Latina.
“When I rushed up to the first floor to look for my mother, I found this disaster — the roof and front wall had gone, and she’d fallen into the street,” said Victor Leiva Ramos, 41.
Leiva Ramos, who was injured while trying to find her in the rubble, including a severed tendon, had his arm bandaged. His 73-year-old mother survived with a few fractures.
Cuba prides itself on suffering relatively few deaths in hurricane season due in part to a rigorous evacuation scheme.
Yet the tornado took Havana by surprise, although state-run media had warned residents that an approaching cold front from the north and winds from the south would create high winds, thunderstorms and heavy rainfall in the area.
Rubiera was later cited as saying that such phenomena were virtually impossible to predict when they affected such concentrated areas.
Diaz-Canel said the council of ministers had held an emergency meeting early on Monday to assess the damage and take the necessary steps to speed up the recovery work.
Cuba’s strongest tornado in nearly 80 years kills at least four
Cuba’s strongest tornado in nearly 80 years kills at least four
- The tornado took Havana by surprise, although state-run media had warned residents that an approaching cold front from the north
- Cuba prides itself on suffering relatively few deaths in hurricane season due in part to a rigorous evacuation scheme
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
