The Cuban government acknowledged Sunday that 32 of its military and Interior Ministry officers were killed during a U.S. raid in Caracas aimed at apprehending Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a rare public admission of Cuban military and intelligence personnel operating inside Venezuela.

Granma, Cuba’s official newspaper, published a statement saying the officers “fulfilled their duty with dignity and heroism and fell, after fierce resistance, in direct combat against the attackers or as a result of the bombing of the facilities.” The statement did not specify the precise missions of those killed, but it identified that at least some of the personnel were at Fuerte Tiuna, the Caracas military complex where U.S. Delta forces reportedly found Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, during the early Saturday operation.

U.S. President Donald Trump told the New York Post on Sunday that Cuban personnel providing personal security to Maduro died during the extraction. “Many Cubans lost their lives last night. They were protecting Maduro. That was not a good move,” he said.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel later said on X that the fallen officers were protecting Maduro and Flores, praising them as “brave Cuban fighters who fell while confronting terrorists in imperial uniforms, who kidnapped and illegally removed the President of Venezuela and his wife from their country.” The Cuban government characterized the U.S. assault as an act of aggression and celebrated the dead as having acted in defense of a sister nation.

The acknowledgment contrasts with prior official Cuban denials of a formal military presence in Venezuela. Cuba’s Interior Ministry oversees the island’s intelligence services, while the island’s armed forces maintain separate intelligence structures; the Granma statement did not delineate which agencies or units were involved.

Venezuelan defense minister Gen. Vladimir Padrino López accused U.S. forces of killing much of Maduro’s security detail “in cold blood,” though his comments did not quantify casualties. Citing an anonymous Venezuelan official, the New York Times reported that at least 40 people died in the raid, a higher toll than Havana’s count.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC’s Meet the Press that Maduro’s internal security apparatus is “entirely controlled by Cubans,” asserting that Cubans, not Venezuelans, guarded the Venezuelan leader. The claim and Havana’s admission highlight the depth of Cuban involvement in Venezuelan security affairs—an involvement that has long been suspected by Washington and explicitly denied by Havana in the past.

The raid — carried out by U.S. special operations forces in the predawn hours — represented a dramatic escalation in U.S. efforts to remove Maduro, who has long been a focal point of regional and international tensions. Details remain murky as officials from the U.S., Cuba and Venezuela offer differing accounts of the operation, objectives, and the sequence of events that led to the acknowledged Cuban fatalities. Investigations and official briefings are expected as governments seek to reconcile conflicting reports and respond to the diplomatic fallout.