Street protests are very rare in communist-run Cuba.
The prosecutor's office said those arrested in Havana and the central provinces of Mayabeque and Ciego de Avila were being charged with assault, public disorder and property damage.
Hurricane Rafael knocked power out on Wednesday after hitting the west of the Caribbean island of 10 million people as a major Category 3 storm. The blackout lasted two days.
It came just two weeks after Hurricane Oscar, which left eight dead in the east of the island during a national electricity blackout caused by the failure of the island's biggest power plant and a shortage of fuel.
The government said that half of the people of Havana now have electricity again but much of the capital and the neighboring province of Artemisa do not.
According to the prosecutor's office, those detained after protesting were being held "for acts of aggression against authorities and territorial inspectors, causing injuries and public disturbances."
A human rights group called Justicia 11J said more than 10 people were arrested in Guanabacoa, a town on the outskirts of Havana.
"Persecution of people in the capital continues," it wrote on the social media platform X. It said those arrested had been acting peacefully in protests that the group itself documented.
The Miami-based NGO Cubalex said Friday that eight people were arrested in Encrucijada in central Cuba.
Cuba has been suffering hours-long power cuts for months and is in the throes of its worst economic crisis since the breakup of key ally the Soviet Union in the early 1990s -- marked by soaring inflation and shortages of basic goods.
The island's electricity is generated by eight aging coal-fired power plants, some of which have broken down or are under maintenance, as well as seven floating plants leased from Turkish companies and a raft of diesel-powered generators.
With concerns of instability on the rise, President Miguel Diaz-Canel has warned that his government will not tolerate attempts to "disturb public order."
On July 11, 2021, thousands of Cubans took to the streets across the island shouting "We are hungry" and "Freedom!" in a rare challenge to the communist government.
According to Mexico-based Justicia 11J, more than 1,500 people were arrested after those protests, of whom 600 are still in prison.
Some have been given prison terms of up to 25 years.
Other sporadic protests have occurred in the last three years, erupting over power blackouts and other miseries.
The UN General Assembly last week renewed its long-standing call for the United States to lift its six-decade trade embargo on the communist island.
Two strong quakes jolt Cuba
Havana (AFP) Nov 10, 2024 -
Two powerful earthquakes rocked southern Cuba in quick succession on Sunday, US geologists said, sending Cubans running into the streets as authorities said no tsunami alert was issued and no deaths immediately reported.
The US Geological Survey put the second, more powerful tremor at a magnitude of 6.8 and 14.6 miles (23.5 kilometers) deep, some 25 miles off the coast of Bartolome Maso, in southern Granma province.
It came just an hour after a first tremor, which the USGS put at a magnitude of 5.9, with the epicenter some nine miles beneath the ocean roughly 22 miles off the municipality of Bartolome Maso.
The state-run newspaper Granma said no deaths had been immediately reported, but that the quake had been felt throughout eastern and central provinces of the Caribbean island nation.
"Here people quickly took to the streets because the ground moved very strongly," Andres Perez, a 65-year-old retiree who lives in downtown Santiago de Cuba, told AFP via telephone of the first quake.
"It felt very strong really, my wife is a bundle of nerves," he added.
"There are houses with cracked walls, others had walls falling down and some had their roofs collapsed," Karen Rodriguez, a 28-year-old hairdresser, told AFP from Caney de las Mercedes, a small town in Bartolome Maso.
Residents in Bayamo, a city of some 140,000 people near Bartolome Maso, described street poles swaying. "People did get scared, everyone came running out of the houses very scared," 24-year-old welder Livan Chavez told AFP.
The US tsunami warning system said no tsunami warning had been issued.
The tremor shook the island as it recovers from Hurricane Rafael, which hit the country's west as a Category 3 storm, leaving residents without power for two days.
A 5.1 magnitude earthquake was recorded in October 2023 in Santiago de Cuba, without causing any damage.
Another strong earthquake of magnitude 7.7 was recorded in January 2020 in the Caribbean and was felt in several Cuban provinces, causing the evacuation of buildings in the capital Havana, with no damage reported.
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