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One dead and 29 injured as a passenger truck crashes in Matanzas

The crash happened on Friday in Carbonera, on the Varadero highway. The provincial health director confirmed one death at the scene and the latest official count raises the number of injured to 29, five of them in a serious condition.

The crash left one person dead and 29 injured, five of them in a serious condition, according to the latest official count reported by 14ymedio. The provincial health director, Yamira López García, confirmed to the newspaper Girón that the fatal victim died at the scene and that two minors are being treated at the provincial Pediatric Hospital for less serious injuries. Periódico Cubano places the crash on the Varadero highway, near Carbonera, in the municipality of Cárdenas, and reports the official's remarks via the Cuban News Agency.

The initial count was 22 injured, two of them in a serious condition. The Dr. Mario Muñoz Monroy Military Hospital treated 22 patients, 21 adults and one child, and identified four traumas requiring neurosurgical assessment and two cervical injuries; one patient underwent emergency surgery for renal trauma. Its deputy director, Humberto Domínguez Suárez, told the newspaper Girón that all of them would be transferred to the Faustino Pérez Hospital "once stabilized, to have a CT scan and be assessed by a neurosurgeon, services we do not have here," in remarks translated by Yamacoa: according to the report, it is the only institution in the province that has both.

The circumstances of the crash have not been officially clarified. 14ymedio reports social media posts saying that a passenger truck "snapped its steering bar and ended up hitting an electricity pole." A Carbonera resident told Periódico Cubano: "The truck's steering broke. It hit a sign. The neighbours here helped pull the injured out," in remarks translated by Yamacoa. According to the accounts gathered, residents and private drivers took victims away because the ambulances were slow to arrive.

The case again puts the focus on road safety. According to figures from the National Road Safety Commission released in January and cited by 14ymedio, 751 people died in traffic accidents in 2025, 18.2% more than the 634 in 2024; crashes went from 7,507 to 7,552 and the injured came to 6,729. The authorities attributed 72% of accidents to the human factor. The paper notes that those statistics barely reflect the deterioration of the roads, inadequate signage and the ageing vehicle fleet, and recalls that the blackouts leave many traffic lights out of service.

Periódico Cubano, citing figures from the same commission reported by Infobae, gives 750 deaths in 2025 in more than 7,500 crashes and 153 deaths in the first quarter of 2026.

Sources: 14ymedio · Periódico Cubano

Data updated: 2026-10-24T05:30:00.000Z

One dead and 29 injured as a passenger truck crashes in Matanzas | Yamacoa Observatory