November 5, 2017
Shark kills swimmer off Cuban coast
HAVANA, Cuba (AFP) — A shark attacked and fatally wounded a young man taking a night-time swim at a beach in Cuba, a newspaper said Monday.
The attack 10 feet offshore at Guardalavaca beach is believed to be unprecedented, the provincial newspaper Ahora said.
Friends swimming with the 22-year-old man hit the shark with a bottle and wrested him from its jaws, then rushed him to a clinic in the city of Holguin, located 730 kilometres northeast of Havana.
But the man arrived in a state of shock, with a gaping wound in the left thigh that must have affected his femoral artery; a doctor named Enrique Remedios told the paper.
Shark attacks are rare in Cuba, which is heavily reliant on foreign tourism.