The New York Times
October 30, 1958, P. 16

Cuba Rebels Spur Drive To Bar Poll
Attack Roads and Rail Lines to Block Nov. 3 Election -Women Units Active

By R. Hart Phillips
Special to The New York Times

HAVANA, Oct. 29-Cuban rebels will attack any vehicle moving on the highways and any railway train, beginning tomorrow and through next Monday, the day fixed for the general elections in Cuba, according to a rebel announcement today.

For the least ten days the radio of Fidel Castro, broadcasting from his rebel headquarters in the Sierra Maestra, in Oriente Province, has warned the public not to travel during this period.

Attacks on transportation and communications in the eastern provinces of Oriente, Camaguey and Las Villas have been intensified.

Rail Service Disrupted

Railway service is almost non-existent in Oriente Province and few trains run in Camaguey. Trains from Havana that formerly went to Santiago de Cuba, the capital of Oriente Province, now end their runs in Santa Clara, the capital of Las Villas Province.

The women of Cuba are playing a prominent role in the rebellion against the government of President Fulgencio Batista, according to the rebel radio.

It said last night that a unit of women commandoes using the name of Mariana Grajales, the mother of Antonio Maceo, Cuba’s patriot leader in the war of independence from Spain sixty-three years ago, won a skirmish with Government troops near Holguin, in northern Oriente. The women’s unit fought in cooperation with a group of men. Three soldiers were killed and six captured the rebel radio said. It named the commander of the women’s unit as Dr. Isabel Rojas.

Cuban Army headquarters here said in a late communique that fifteen rebels had been killed in the clashes in Oriente. It listed five killed near La Yaya, near Holguin; five in Peurto Maniaboa district, near Puerto Padre, and five near Bayamo.

The Castro radio accused the Batista regime of using the situation at the United States Government-owned Nicaro nickel plant and mines to bring the United States into the Cuban civil war.

The rebels said the Cuban troops left Nicaro days before the rebels moved in, but reentered to fight the rebels when Washington last week evacuated most of the American citizens there.

The rebels charged that two Cuban Navy ships entered Nicaro harbor in the wake of the United States Navy transport Kleinsmith and carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt after the rebels had removed mines at the entrance of the harbor to permit the American warships to carry out the evacuation.