Cuba says 4 killed, 6 wounded on US-registered boat in ‘confrontation’ off Cuba’s coast
The Cuban flag waves outside of the Embassy of Cuba in Washington, DC on October 3, 2017, in Washington, DC. The U.S. orders on Tuesday the expulsion of 15 Cuban Diplomats from the Washington DC Embassy. (Photo by Olivier Douliery/Getty Images)
(CUBA) — Four people on a speedboat were killed and another six injured in a “confrontation” near Cuba’s coast after those on board the United States-registered vessel opened fire on Cuban troops, according to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior.
As Border Guard troops approached the boat for identification after it was detected in Cuban waters, those on board the speedboat “opened fire,” injuring the commander of the Cuban vessel, the ministry said.
“As a consequence of the confrontation, as of the time of this report, four aggressors on the foreign vessel were killed and six were injured,” the ministry said in a statement released by the Cuban Embassy in the United States.
Those injured were evacuated and received medical assistance, it said.
The speedboat was registered in Florida, according to the ministry. It approached Wednesday morning about 1 nautical mile northeast of the El Pino channel, in Cayo Falcones in the Villa Clara province, the ministry said.
When reached for comment, the U.S. Coast Guard, White House and other related agencies referred ABC News to the State Department.
“In the face of current challenges, Cuba reaffirms its determination to protect its territorial waters, based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar of the Cuban State in safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region,” the Cuban Ministry of the Interior said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier docks at Souda Bay on Crete Island, Greece on February 24, 2026. (Stefanos Rapanis/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Officials from Iran and the United States opened high-stakes negotiations in Geneva on Thursday, a third round of nuclear talks that are arriving amid heightened tensions and that could prove pivotal in President Donald Trump’s decision about whether to order a military intervention.
The White House previously said it would accept nothing short of a full stop for Tehran’s uranium enrichment efforts. Trump in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night warned that Iran sought to restart that program after the United States “obliterated” it in strikes on the nation in June.
The White House in recent weeks ordered a major U.S. military buildup in the Middle East, as Trump has weighed options for possible strikes against Iran.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Iran poses a “very great threat” to the United States, but added that the president would prefer to deal with Tehran through diplomacy. He also said Tehran appeared to be attempting to restart its nuclear program.
“You can see them always trying to rebuild elements of it,” Rubio told reporters during his trip to St. Kitts and Nevis. “They’re not enriching right now, but they’re trying to get to the point where they ultimately can.”
Officials from Oman are facilitating the indirect talks in Switzerland. The White House’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are representing the United States.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said early on Thursday that Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister, arrived in Switzerland on Wednesday evening and met with Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, his Omani counterpart.
Araghchi during that meeting “stressed that the success of the negotiations depends on the seriousness of the other side and its avoidance of contradictory behavior and positions,” according to Iran.
Questions remained about the current state of Iran’s nuclear program, despite Trump saying it had been “obliterated” in June. Senior Israeli officials told ABC News in July that some enriched uranium may have survived the powerful U.S. strikes. Washington maintains that Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons, a claim that Tehran has denied.
Araghchi on Tuesday appeared to agree with the White House’s efforts to stop it from building a nuclear weapon, but stopped short of saying there would be no future enrichment of any kind.
“Our fundamental convictions are crystal clear: Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon; neither will we Iranians ever forgo our right to harness the dividends of peaceful nuclear technology for our people,” Araghchi said in a social media post.
Witkoff in an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News said that Tehran was “probably a week away from having industrial-grade, bomb-making material, and that’s really dangerous.”
Witkoff and Kushner have been given an extensive remit by the White House, which has also tapped them as lead negotiators for other high-stakes talks, including those related to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
That approach has drawn some criticism, including from Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, who said on Wednesday that it was “suspect” that “the same two people” would have the time to effectively manage the workload.
“It’s just not the way to project steady, strong leadership which the world needs from the United States on these very dangerous hot spots,” Tillis said.
Iran has a “positive outlook” on the talks and hopes to “move beyond this ‘neither war nor peace’ situation,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in public remarks in Farsi on Wednesday in Sari, Iran.
“Hopefully, we can move beyond this ‘neither war nor peace’ situation,” he added. “If that happens, we will then be able to remove obstacles from our path much more easily.”
A view of the destruction in the area following Russia’s drone attack in the city of Odessa, Ukraine on February 12, 2026. (Artur Shvits/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that Russia is yet to respond to a U.S.-backed energy truce, as the two combatants continue to exchange long-range drone and missile strikes amid American-led peace talks.
Recent trilateral U.S.-Ukraine-Russia talks in the United Arab Emirates were described by all sides as constructive, though appear to have failed to find a breakthrough on several contentious points or secure a new truce covering critical energy infrastructure.
After the most recent round of talks last week, Zelenskyy said that U.S. officials proposed a temporary pause in attacks on energy targets, which would have mirrored the brief pause on such attacks that occurred at the end of January.
Zelenskyy said on Thursday that Kyiv is yet to receive a response from Moscow on the purported offer. “On the contrary, we’ve received a response in the form of drone and missile attacks. This suggests that they are not yet ready for the energy ceasefire proposed in Abu Dhabi by the American side,” he said.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 25 missiles and 219 drones into the country overnight, of which 16 missiles and 197 drones were shot down or suppressed.
The impacts of nine missiles and 19 drones were reported across 13 locations, the air force said. “The main targets are Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odesa,” the air force wrote on Telegram.
Four people, including two children, were also injured in strikes on the central city of Dnipro, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said. An earlier strike on the Synelnykove city just outside of Dnipro killed four people and injured three others, the regional administration said in posts to Telegram.
The Interior Ministry said that at least 13 people were injured in a series of drone strikes in the city of Barvinkove in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
The regional military administration in Odesa said one person was also injured there by Russian strikes.
The Interior Ministry reported damage to several areas of the capital. At least two people were injured by the attacks on Kyiv, according to the head of the city’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that almost 2,600 residential buildings were left without heating due to “damage to critical infrastructure targeted by the enemy.”
In total, approximately more than 1 million people without heating in the Ukrainian capital, according to Klitschko and Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba.
DTEK — Ukraine’s top private energy firm — reported major damage to its energy infrastructure in Odesa, plus an attack on a thermal power plant.
Ukrenergo, the state energy transmission operator, reported power outages in Kyiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described the attacks as “Russian terror” in a post to X. “Each such strike is a blow to peace efforts aimed at ending the war. Russia must be forced to take diplomacy seriously and deescalate,” he said.
Zelenskyy said in a post to Telegram, “There needs to be more protection against these attacks.”
“The most effective defense against Russian ballistic missiles is the ‘Patriot’ system, and the supply of missiles for these systems is needed every day,” he added, referring to the U.S.-made surface-to-air missile platform.
“Everything currently available in the air defense program should arrive faster,” he said.
Ukraine continued its own drone strike campaign overnight. The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces shot down 106 Ukrainian drones overnight into Thursday morning.
Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov reported that two people were killed in drone attacks. At least 15 other people were injured across the region by Ukrainian attacks, the governor said. Gladkov also said Ukrainian forces fired several missiles into the region.
Local officials in the Volgograd, Tambov and Voronezh reported damage to industrial sites and falling drone debris in or close to residential areas.
Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, reported temporary flight restrictions for airports in Kaluga, Volgograd, Saratov, Yaroslavl, Kotlas, Ukhta, Perm and Kirov.
Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement posted to social media that among the targets of the strikes were the main arsenal of Russia’s missile and artillery forces in the Volgograd region. “This arsenal is one of the largest ammunition storage sites of the Russian army,” the General Staff said.
The ongoing peace talks have seen no easing of long-range strikes by either side, as the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion approaches.
As yet, no next round of talks have been scheduled. Zelenskyy said the U.S. had proposed a new trilateral meeting to be held in Miami, but that, “So far, as I understand it, Russia is hesitating.”
“We are ready. It doesn’t matter to us whether the meeting will be in Miami or Abu Dhabi. The main thing is that there should be a result,” the Ukrainian president said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Thursday that Moscow had “a certain understanding” regarding the next round of talks. “We expect the next round to take place soon. We’ll also give you directions on the location,” he added, as quoted by the state-run Tass news agency.
Russian Foreign Ministry officials have this week been critical of the ongoing peace push.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week suggested that the U.S. side had drifted from the understandings reached between Moscow and Washington at the August meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
Lavrov also said Trump’s administration had failed to roll back former President Joe Biden-era sanctions against Moscow.
Lavrov and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova framed the lack of progress as the fault of Kyiv and its European backers.
“At the current stage, it is the European Union that is preventing the Kyiv regime from making any compromises in exchange for promises to provide everything necessary to continue military operations,” Zakharova said in a briefing on Thursday, as quoted by Tass.
F-18 jet fighters are seen on the flight deck of USS Gerald R. Ford on Nov. 17, 2022, in Gosport, England. (Photo by Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A second American aircraft carrier — the USS Gerald R. Ford — is heading toward the Middle East amid rising tensions with Iran, accompanied by destroyers and aircraft being redeployed from missions in the Caribbean region, a U.S. official told ABC News.
As negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program continue, American aircraft carriers are at the forefront of a major U.S. military buildup in the Middle East. The Ford is expected to join the USS Abraham Lincoln in the region, the latter having arrived there late last month.
The Ford briefly transmitted its location off the coast of Morocco on Wednesday as it approached the Mediterranean Sea, according to data from the MarineTraffic website. The carrier’s location was visible for around two hours.
Also visible on the FlightRadar24 website on Wednesday were two C-2A Greyhound aircraft, which in recent months have been operating off the carrier. The aircraft transmitted their locations off the coast of Portugal, around 230 miles from the Ford’s position.
The Ford is being accompanied by four destroyers as it sails east toward the Middle East.
Three of the destroyers are part of the Ford’s carrier strike group that have accompanied the carrier since it first deployed in June, the fourth destroyer had previously been a part of President Donald Trump’s administration’s surge of military forces in the Caribbean, a U.S. official confirmed to ABC News.
Each of the destroyers is armed with air defense systems that can shoot down incoming missiles and drones, plus Tomahawk cruise missiles that can be used to strike targets up to 1,000 miles away.
F-35 stealth fighter jets are among the U.S. assets heading toward the Middle East, including some that had been deployed to Puerto Rico ahead of the U.S. operation to depose Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
A spokesman for the Vermont National Guard confirmed to ABC News that the 158th Fighter Wing received a change in mission from U.S. Southern Command — which oversees operations in the Caribbean, Central and South America — but did not disclose their new deployment area.
In late January, online flight trackers noted a dozen F-35 fighters taking off from Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto Rico and landing on the Azores islands in the mid-Atlantic, on their way to the Middle East.
Key Iranian nuclear personnel and facilities were targeted by Israeli and American forces during an intense 12-day conflict in June. But the strikes failed to resolve long-standing U.S. and Israeli grievances related to Tehran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile arsenal and its support for regional proxy groups.
U.S. and Iranian representatives met in Geneva, Switzerland, this week for talks regarding a possible deal related to Tehran’s nuclear program and its enrichment of uranium. Trump has demanded that Iran commit to “zero enrichment,” a proposal rejected by Iranian officials.
U.S. officials briefed on the negotiations said Iran indicated a willingness to suspend its nuclear enrichment for a certain amount of time, anywhere from one to five years.
The U.S. is also weighing lifting financial and banking sanctions and the embargo on its oil sales, according to a U.S. official.
Following the talks in Geneva, Iran is expected to submit a written proposal aimed at resolving the tensions, a senior U.S. official confirmed to ABC News on Wednesday. It is unclear when the written proposal will be submitted to the U.S.
On Tuesday, a White House official said Iran would provide detailed proposals to address “some of the open gaps in our positions” in the next two weeks.
ABC News’ Shannon Kingston and Mariam Khan contributed to this report.
