October 15, 1971

By Don Bohning

A Miami-based exile group that had promised to be fighting inside Cuba by the end of 1970 claimed credit Thursday for a nighttime strafing attack on a Cuban coastal village in which Havana Radio said two people were killed and four injured.

The Havana broadcast, monitored in Miami, said the Tuesday night hit-and-run raid by boat occurred at Boca de Sama, near Banes, on the north coast of Cuba's easternmost Oriente province.

In New York, Guillermo Martinez Marquez, a spokesman for a Miami-based exile organization headed by Jose de la Torriente said it marked the group's "first military operation in the war to free Cuba from its Communist yoke."

Torriente, a 67-year-old retired exile businessman who lives in Coral Gables, was not available for comment, but a local representative for his group confirmed the Tuesday night action.

He said that Torriente would hold a press conference Monday in New York to present details and proof of the raid's effectiveness. The spokesman said it was the beginning of a so-called "work plan for the liberation of Cuba."

The group said its attack Tuesday night was on "a military objective on the north coast of the province of Oriente."

Havana radio said the speedboat raid was launched from a mother ship about 10 p.m. Tuesday by "mercenaries" who "immediately fled out to sea, heading north" after machine-gunning the village.

The broadcast said a border patrol guard and an Interior Ministry policeman were killed in the raid and a 15-year-old girl, one of the four persons injured, lost her leg as a result of gunshot wounds.

It charged the United States and its "henchmen" with the responsibility for "these cowardly and bloody acts."

"Once again," said the broadcast, "our people have lost their lives through the criminal actions of the mercenaries in the service of Yankee imperialism."

The raid was the first exile action confirmed by Havana this year.

Another exile group, the United Invasion Movement headed by former Cuban Supreme Court Justice Francisco Alabau Trelles, had claimed a raid on Cuba's south coast September 19.

It was never confirmed, and it now is widely believed in Miami's Cuban community and by other informed sources that the raid did not take place.

Torriente first appeared on the exile scene late in 1969 as the leader of a "unification" movement. He repeatedly had promised action against Castro by the end of 1970, but the raid Tuesday is the first his group has managed.