Cuba said 2,085 of its soldiers were killed while fighting abroad over the last three decades, nearly all of them in Angola.
The exact figure, which for years was kept a secret, was released the day before the bodies of Cuba's war dead repatriated from foreign battlegrounds were due to be buried in a nationwide day of mourning.A defense ministry statement said 2,289 Cubans died "on civilian and military internationalist missions" in Angola, Ethiopia, and other countries since the 1959 revolution that overthrew a right wing dictatorship in Cuba and brought Fidel Castro to power.
Of the total dead, 863 were killed in direct combat, 597 died from illness and 829 were killed in accidents, the statement said. Of the total dead, 204 were civilians.
The vast majority - 2,016 - were soldiers who died in Angola where since 1975 tens of thousands of Cuban troops have helped to defend the left-wing government against South African attack.