Cubans stage rare protests demanding electricity, food

Havana: Cubans staged rare street protests Sunday over food and electricity shortages as the island suffered long outages that left some areas without...

Havana: Cubans staged rare street protests Sunday over food and electricity shortages as the island suffered long outages that left some areas without power for up to 14 hours a day.

"People were shouting 'food and electricity'," a 65-year-old resident, who asked not to be identified, told AFP by phone from the island's second-largest city Santiago de Cuba, 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of the capital Havana.

Electricity was restored to the city later in the day and "two truckloads of rice" were delivered, the resident said.

Social media platforms were filled with images of protests in Santiago de Cuba, a city of 510,000 people. There were also images of protests in another large city, Bayamo.

Unprecedented mass anti-government protests by citizens clamoring for food and greater freedoms amid deep economic and social woes in communist Cuba in July 2021 were forcefully put down.