Explosions Hit Hotels In Havana U.S.-Based Groups Blamed By Cuba

Explosions struck three tourist hotels in the Cuban capital of Havana on Thursday, killing an Italian tourist and scattering shards of plate glass across a hotel lobby.

Cuba’s Interior Ministry called the explosions “acts of terrorism” by U.S.-based anti-government groups that it says are trying to undermine tourism, a mainstay of the island’s economy, the official Cuban news agency Prensa Latina reported.

Reporters reached by telephone said the first and worst explosion took place at midday in a bar of the Copacabana hotel.

Fabio Di Celmo, a 32-year-old tourist staying in the Copacabana, was killed in the blast, the Italian government said in Rome. Di Celmo was a native of Genoa, Italy, and lived in Montreal, the Foreign Ministry said.

The Copacabana’s bar is connected to the hotel’s main lobby and after the explosion, workers were seen cleaning up fragments of glass from the lobby, the reporters said.

Reporters said two muchsmaller blasts occurred within 45 minutes of the first explosion at the Chateau and Triton hotels. There were no immediate reports of injuries there.

A receptionist at the Chateau, contacted by telephone, insisted “nothing happened here.” She would not give her name.

But police blocked access to all three hotels Thursday afternoon.

The Cuban government has blamed its U.S.-based opponents for several similar hotel blasts in the capital earlier this year, saying they were “encouraged, organized and supplied … from within the United States’ territory.”

U.S. officials have said they had no information to support that claim, and on Thursday said there was no justification for bombings.

“The United States is committed to supporting a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba,” said State Department spokesman James P. Foley. “This does not in any way condone the use of violence as a means of achieving that transition or of demonstrating political opposition.”