Two strong earthquakes shake Cuba

A powerful earthquake of magnitude 6.8 shook the southeastern coast of Cuba on Sunday, preceded by another strong strong seismic event. The event occurs at a time when the country is recovering from Hurricane Rafael that hit the island this week, leaving it in complete darkness for almost two days.

In addition, on October 20, Oscar, another hurricane, hit the east of the island, in the middle of another power outage that lasted four days.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) placed the epicenter of the first quake at a depth of 23.5 kilometers in the ocean, near the coast of Bartolome Maso, in Granma province, and about 175 kilometers from Santiago de Cuba, the country's second largest city.

An hour earlier, the earth was shaken hard by a 5.9-magnitude tremor in the same area, according to the USGS.

Tsunami warnings were not issued in either case.

"There have been landslides, damage to homes and power lines," dictator Miguel Diaz-Canel said on his X account.

In Caney de las Mercedes, a small town within the municipality of Bartolome Maso, Karen Rodriguez still in fear told AFP that "it felt really hard."

"It had been about half an hour after the first tremor and then we were returning to the house when the second one came, which was even stronger," added the 28-year-old hairdresser.

In the town "there are houses that have cracked walls, others have fallen walls and some the roof," she said.

The seismic movements were felt in all eastern provinces, in addition to Camagüey and Ciego de Avila (center), according to the official newspaper Granma, which has not reported any human casualties so far.

People also felt the strong aftershock in Bayamo, capital of Granma -of 140,000 inhabitants-,located 50 km from Bartolome Maso.

Another earthquake of magnitude 5.1 was registered last October 17 in Santiago de Cuba without leaving any damage.