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Cuba's government on Friday called a rash of explosions at Havana luxury hotels "acts of terrorism" and accused the U.S. government of trying to destabilize the country.
Explosions struck three tourist hotels and a renowned restaurant in the capital of Havana on Thursday, killing an Italian tourist and hurling plate glass shards across a hotel lobby.
Reporters contacted by telephone Friday in the capital said the fourth explosion occurred late Thursday night at the La Bodeguita del Medio restaurant. The downtown Havana restaurant, a legendary hangout of the late writer Ernest Hemingway, is popular with tourists.
The Cuban government for the first time on Friday directly blamed Washington for the explosions. In the past, it has accused groups or people from the United States, but not the government itself.
"There is coincidence between official U.S. announcements about financing the counterrevolution and the appearance of these professional assassins, who have no scruples and no pity for the lives of human beings," Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina said Friday without elaboration.
"There should be no doubt that those responsible and in particular the authors of the attack that caused the death of the Italian businessman, will pay heavily for these cowardly and repugnant actions," Robaina said in comments carried by the Cuban government's Prensa Latina news agency, monitored in Mexico City.
Cuba's Interior Ministry also condemned the hotel explosions in a brief statement Friday in the official Communist newspaper Granma. It said the attacks were the attempt of "enemy interests in strangling the economy by any means, as a way of destroying the revolution."
Reporters said the first and worst explosion on Thursday took place 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 there, the Italian government said in Rome. A native of Genoa, Italy, di Celmo lived in Montreal, the government said.
Reporters said two smaller blasts occurred within 45 minutes of the first, at the Chateau and Triton hotels. There were no reports of injuries there and police blocked access to all three hotels after the explosions.
The government of Fidel Castro blamed its U.S.-based opponents for several similar hotel blasts in the capital in July and August, saying they were "encouraged, organized and supplied ... from within the United States' territory."
U.S. officials have said they have 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 said. "This does not in any way condone the use of violence as a means of achieving that transition or of demonstrating political opposition."