There is still no official information from Africa confirming this unfortunate news, but a message from the referred Somali terrorist group points out that the two Cuban doctors who were kidnapped by them a little less than 5 years ago in Kenya perished in an alleged U.S. attack last February 15. The Cuban doctors, who in 2019 were providing services in Kenya as part of a bilateral agreement, reportedly lost their lives in the Somali town of Jilib, where Al-Shabaab is strong.
According to the group, the doctors were doing "community service" in the areas where they operate. They blame the United States for this disaster, when in any case, if the fatal event is confirmed, they were the ones who exposed the Cuban professionals. The government in Havana, for its part, will no longer be able to claim that it is working to guarantee their safe return to the homeland. Whatever their efforts may have been, they failed. Plain and simple. If you ask me, I believe that there was passivity and that all resources were not exhausted.
The Cuban government claimed four years ago that resolving the situation required discretion, but I think they lacked a more aggressive communication strategy, to mobilize solidarity and draw attention to the situation. We ourselves most of the time forgot that Assel Herrera and Landy Rodriguez were at risk of dying in an event such as the one that seems to have happened. However, by the way, there is a huge responsibility for the authorities of Kenya and Somalia, and in general of the whole continent, which owes much to Cuba beyond the polemic readings on our critical military intervention there in the last quarter of the 20th century.
The last reported raid by the U.S. military mission focused on Africa and particularly targeted al-Shabaab was last February 9, with two terrorists killed, and no civilian casualties. The alleged statement from this al-Qaeda wing suggests that poor intelligence from U.S. Africa Command led to this tragic outcome, and at the same time says that U.S. forces deliberately have targeted its prisoners "for several years". At least one source implies that the Somali government—strongly assisted by Washington—believes that the terrorist group itself killed the doctors, a thesis that cannot be ruled out. We will be looking for any information that offers more light on the alleged event.
