Cubans Wrap Up Emergency Exercises

Cubans awoke to air raid sirens Sunday and practiced shooting, putting on gas masks and doing duck-and-cover drills as the communist nation wrapped up a week of preparation against possible attack.

Fidel Castro’s government has repeatedly warned against the threat of attack from the United States. “The risks of [U.S.] aggression are real,” the Cuban leader said Sunday on state television.

U.S. authorities have repeatedly rejected that idea. Last week, the State Department said the large-scale exercises in Cuba were held to distract people from the hardships of their lives.

State-run newspapers reported Sunday that the Strategic Bastion 2004 exercises were a success and that Cuba’s “capacity to resist and overcome an imperialist aggression” was demonstrated.

Cuban army troops, reserves and militiamen spent the week firing rockets, launching grenades and practicing drills with civilians. Soldiers put up barricades in Havana neighborhoods as fighter jets flew overhead.

Thousands of Cubans took to the streets, taking their prearranged places under the doctrine of “The Peoples’ War,” in which every citizen, young and old, participates in the defense of the country.

Children were sent to schools early Sunday for duck-and-cover drills. Civilians practiced shooting and first-aid.

State media reported that 4 million Cubans participated in the drills, the biggest of their kind in 18 years.