MIAMI, United States.- The Cuban regime said this Monday that what the United States has offered is technical advice regarding the fire of great magnitude that has consumed part of the Matanzas Supertanker Base since last Friday.
In a sequence of posts on Twitter, the official media outlet Cubadebate quoted the deputy director general for the United States of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX), Johana Tablada, who, according to the state media outlet, clarified doubts on the subject.
“Johana Tablada, deputy director general for the United States of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, clarifies on her Facebook profile: We ask for international help and the United States was the one that made the decision to offer technical advice,” reads the first publication.
Then he adds: “It is what they have offered so far. It does not depend on Cuba. We have a bilateral agreement signed during the Obama administration to coordinate operations and combat spills at sea, but it does not apply to disasters on land.
“They offered technical advice (talking by phone with our specialists). We immediately accepted it and these conversations have been held with experts from the United States, which we have publicly thanked,” the official said.
Tablada’s statements come after an intense weekend on the island, where the authorities are struggling to extinguish the fire, caused by lightning on Friday night, and which as of Monday has already affected three of the eight tanks of fuel in the industrial zone of Matanzas.
On Saturday, less than 24 hours after the fire was reported, the Miguel Díaz-Canel regime requested international help and advice from “friendly countries” with experience in oil, given the inability within Cuba to handle the situation.
At that time it was the Embassy of the United States in Cuba that publicly acknowledged that experts on the subject had already contacted the Cuban authorities to offer advice, a decision that shortly after the Cuban dictatorship publicly thanked.
For their part, the governments of Mexico and Venezuela, allies of the communist regime in Havana, sent planes on Saturday with specialists and supplies to help extinguish the fire, which continues out of control until today, Monday, August 8.
This afternoon at least two more explosions at the Super Tanker Base involving tank number 3.
The fire in Matanzas has so far left 125 injured, two deaths have been reported, and at least 15 firefighters remain missing.
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