The Tulipán hotel in Havana was evacuated for at least two hours on Sunday night after receiving a call warning of the placement of an explosive, which turned out to be false. The event occurred around 10 p.m., when the receptionist answered the phone and sounded the alarm.
The workers and clients of the hotel, among whom was the baseball team of the capital, Industriales, rushed out into the streets, some of them even in their underwear, according to the residents of Nuevo Vedado, where the hotel facility is located.
The police and firefighters went to the hotel, where they began the search for the alleged artifact, and at about 11:45 at night they ended the operation with an announcement on Cuban Television. The capital’s Tourism delegate told the official press that apparently it was a “bad intention to create panic.”
That line is what the ruling party has taken, which has accused the media and journalists “financed by the US” of generating fear. Cubadebate he claimedbased on “local information”, that the alert “was generated by a call from” the neighboring country and accused the journalist Mario J. Penton, from América TeVé of “initiating alarmist speculation”.
“After several attempted boycott actions against tourism, now they are returning to old methods to create panic in the population,” said the official. cuban reasons.
The Tulipán hotel, belonging to the Gaviota state group, is a three-star economic establishment where the Government houses sports teams and parliamentarians. This is not one of the attractive internationally managed facilities that welcome international travellers. And that is why this bomb alert has generated some speculation among members of the opposition who doubt that such a place could become the target of an attack aimed at tourism and have seen in the emergency a “smokescreen” that justifies the militarization of Havana this Monday, the day the long-awaited trial against Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Osorbo begins.
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