Tourism Minister Osmany Cienfuegos called the explosions at the Capri and Nacional hotels ``the work of our enemies,'' and a Nacional employee with army experience said it was ``definitely a bomb, a big bomb.''
The explosions brought to five the number of bomb incidents confirmed since April in the tightly controlled Marxist state, where political violence was almost unknown for the past 30 years.
Coupled with Friday's crash of a Cuban airliner in which 44 people were believed killed, the latest bombings were certain to put a damper on Cuba's booming tourism industry, now as big a source of hard currency as sugar.
Hundreds of Cubans and tourists milled outside the two hotels, barely two blocks apart in Havana's once-elegant Vedado district, eyeing the shattered windows and lines of uniformed police guarding the buildings.
The government made no official comment, and telephone operators at the hotels appeared to be under orders to tell all callers that ``some windows shattered,'' but no one was seriously injured.
A Hotel Nacional employee reached by phone said three people suffered cuts and bruises, however, when a powerful blast at 11:35 a.m. rocked the lobby near the reception desk and wooden telephone booths.
``It was like a mortar bomb going off -- the flash of light, the shock wave, the sound and then the smell of explosives,'' said the worker, a veteran of the Cuban military who did not want his name used.
About five people were knocked to the floor, but two were virtually untouched by the shards of mahogany furniture and white plaster sent flying by the blast, he added. Four ambulances were called but only one was needed.
Workers later began erecting a makeshift partition around the most heavily damaged area, guests reported.
A guest in the Capri Hotel said the blast in the lobby, 10 minutes earlier than the Nacional explosion, was so strong that ``it felt like an earthquake'' in his room on the 10th floor. Other blasts rumored
Cienfuegos toured the Capri just minutes after the blast and told reporters outside that no one had been wounded there. Vice President Carlos Lage later toured the Hotel Nacional and made no comment.
In the earlier incidents this year, one bomb exploded in Havana's Hotel Melia Cohiba April 2 and a second was found and disarmed. A third exploded or was found in a Varadero beach resort hotel. Rumors of at least three other blasts have not been confirmed.
At least two people have been detained in connection with those explosions, including a Hialeah resident who police say was found with traces of C-4 plastic explosives in her handbag.
Cuban officials have neither confirmed nor denied the previous blasts, which they managed to keep out of the media until The Herald published the story last month. Security undermined
But independent analysts in Havana said the blasts would clearly worry the government of President Fidel Castro because they undermine two strategic supports of his communist government.
A record 1 million-plus vacationers visited Cuba last year, but tourism is a notoriously skittish industry that could plummet in the wake of news reports about the bombings and Friday's plane crash.
The blasts also show a glaring gap in Cuba's once-famously efficient state security system, said foreigners in Cuba, one that protected Castro and nipped dozens of plots over more than three decades.
``There's something out there that they have not penetrated,'' said one well-informed European in Havana, referring to the Castro regime's apparent inability to infiltrate and dismantle whatever group may be behind the attacks. Prominent targets
Whoever was responsible for Saturday's blasts could not have picked more prominent targets.
The Nacional, built in the 1920s on a bluff overlooking Havana's famed Malecon seaside drive, is one of Cuba's most elegant hotels, designed by the same architect who designed the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Cables. Its rooms rent for about $150 a night and draw mostly well-off tourists.
The Capri is about two blocks away, a modern, blockish-looking tower of about a dozen floors built in the 1950s. A favorite with U.S. tourists in pre-Castro years, it has fallen into some disrepair. It charges about $100 per night and is favored by younger European tourists.
Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald