The country’s main highway has seen fifty people injured and two killed in just 72 hours.
14ymedio, Havana, November 10, 2025 — A bus collided with a cart in the early hours of Monday morning on the National Highway, leaving 27 people injured, four of them with life-threatening injuries. The crash occurred just three days after another massive crash at kilometre 183 of the same road. This time, the collision took place near the community of La Caoba, in the municipality of Venezuela, in Ciego de Ávila.
The official newspaper Invasor reported on its Facebook page that most of the injured were taken to the Antonio Luaces Iraola Provincial Teaching Hospital, and the rest to the local polyclinic. In the same publication a witness criticised the delay in help arriving: “At seven in the morning, the first ambulance had still not arrived,” he wrote. According to his testimony, the injured were rescued by “neighbours in carts as best they could”.
The crash involved a bus carrying workers from the El Fortín Credit and Trade Cooperative. Images posted on social media show the left side of the vehicle completely destroyed.
A fourth seriously ill patient, with a fractured pelvis, remained at the Venezuela municipal polyclinic.
Dr Inés Padrón González, a specialist in intensive care and emergencies, later reported that the hospital in Avila had received 20 patients, although “not all cases have arrived”. Of those admitted to the centre, three were in a life-threatening condition: two with severe head trauma and another with “abdominal trauma with free fluid in the cavity”, whose condition was being assessed for possible surgery. A fourth seriously injured patient, with a pelvic fracture, remained at the Venezuela polyclinic. The rest of the injured were reported to be stable, with minor injuries and orthopaedic trauma.
Last Friday, when a Yutong bus veered off the road at kilometre 183 of the National Highway, two women died: Mikenia Valenciano Godínez, 36, originally from Songo La Maya, Santiago de Cuba, but residing in Havana; and Dainé Rodríguez Hernández, 22, also from Santiago.
Of the more than 20 people injured in the crash, two remain in critical condition, connected to artificial ventilation in the intensive care unit of the provincial hospital in Cienfuegos. Two other patients are reported to be in serious condition, with hip fractures and post-traumatic hemorrhages.
In just three days, these two massive crashes on the National Highway have left nearly fifty people injured and have once again exposed the deplorable state of Cuba’s main road. The proximity of both crashes highlights the fact that Cuban roads have become increasingly lethal.
Translated by GH
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