New York Times
April 2, 1958. p. 1.
Batista Regime So
Reports as Havana Awaits ‘War’
Special to The New York
Times
HAVANA, Wednesday, April 2—Nineteen rebels have been killed during the last twenty-four hours in encounters with Government troops in Oriente Province, the center of revolutionary activities against the Batista Government, according to a communiqué issued during the night by Camp Columbia Army headquarters here.
At this point, telephone contact with The New York Times correspondent in Havana was broken by a telephone operator in Havana. The Havana operator said that the call was cut on orders of a superior.
Other information received from Havana indicated that the rebel soldiers were killed while they were implementing an order by Fidel Castro, revolutionary leader in Oriente at Cuba’s eastern end, to fire on all vehicles moving in the province. The Castro order was said to have been fairly effective in halting road transport in the province.
Several Government soldiers were reported killed in a rebel attack in Oriente near Moa Bay plant of Freeport Sulphur, an American-owned mining company.
Special to The New York Times
HAVANA, April 1—Cuba is waiting anxiously for the “total war” that Fidel Castro, rebel leader, has threatened to start in Oriente Province today against the Government of President Fulgencio Batista.
Military action by the rebels is scheduled to be accompanied by a Cuba revolutionary strike as a supreme effort to overthrow the Batista regime. The strike is to be called at the “opportune” time, according to a manifesto issued by Señor Castro to the people of Cuba recently.
Drastic censorship blacked out most news of rebel activities throughout the island today and only a few reports seeped through to Havana.
Three soldiers were reported killed when 150 rebels attacked a military post at Moa on the north coast of Oriente Province. The four other soldiers in the post escaped, it is said.
Transportation was slowed almost to a standstill in Camaguey and Oriente Provinces. There was no evidence of workers’ strikes but attacks on trains busses and private cars and the rebels’ threat to fire on any moving vehicles from today on has left the transportation companies without passengers.
In Santiago transportation into and out of the city was virtually paralyzed. No vegetables, fruits or milk entered the city, and prices rose. Soldiers and policemen armed with rifles and machine guns patrolled the city in cars and on foot and few persons ventured into the streets.
All tall buildings in the city are reported to have been taken over by the army in anticipation of a rebel attack. Military authorities were rounding up opposition elements in the city and had arrested many workers known to be rebel sympathizers in an effort to forestall the strike movement.
Last night rebels burned a 4,000-gallon gasoline tank of the Texas Company just outside Santiago. A bridge at Cauto Cristo, between Santiago and Holjuin, also was burned by the rebels.
Travelers reaching Havana reported the landing of two expeditions in Oriente Province. One group of insurgents, said to be headed by Pedro Miret, landed at the small port of Yateritas east of Guantanamo. Another group was said to have landed near Santiago de Cuba.
BROWNSVILLE, Tex., April 1 (AP)—Twenty Cuban rebel sympathizers at the county jail here entered their sixth day of fasting today. The hunger strike has sent fifteen of their companions to hospitals.
The men, arrested by the Coast Guard Thursday, are protesting United States shipments of arms to President Batista’s forces in Cuba.
MIAMI, April 1 (AP)—Twenty-two Cubans were arrested at a railroad station today as the protested departure of a Cuban Government delegation en route to Washington to seek arms to quell rebel demonstrations. Later they were released in bail.
Ten Cubans lounged in the lobby of television station WTVJ and said they would not eat until thirty-six other Cubans and Cuban-Americans were released from jail in Brownsville, Tex.